The Daily Stoic - John Barry on the Great Influenza and the Value of Truth

Episode Date: August 6, 2022

Ryan talks to John M. Barry about the similarities between the public reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 1918 pandemic, the importance of telling the truth, serving the common good, and more.John M. Barry, the prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won multiple awards, His books The Great Influenza: the story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America have involved John in high-level policy-making regarding flood protection, pandemic preparedness, resilience, and risk communication. A keynote speaker at such varied events as a White House Conference on the Mississippi Delta and an International Congress on Respiratory Viruses, he has also given talks in such venues as the National War College, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Harvard Business School. He is co-originator of what is now called the Bywater Institute, a Tulane University center dedicated to comprehensive river research. ✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. As you know, I used to live in New Orleans. I moved to New Orleans when I was writing my first book, Trust Me I'm Lying. It's crazy to me to think it came out exactly 10 years ago this month.

And this would have been right around at the time, sometime between 10 and 11 years ago, that I read one of the best books of narrative nonfiction that I've ever read, rising tide, the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and how it changed America by John Embarry, which I read and totally changed how I saw New Orleans, so I saw the Mississippi River, which I did not know that much about being from California. And I fell in love with New Orleans, I fell in love with the history of this part of the country. And most of all, it turned me on to Walker Percy and his kind of southern stoicism turned me on to one of my all-time favorite novels, which would be the movie goer, which I recommend all the time. And I don't know why I put off reading John's other book, especially because as someone pointed out, like in December

or January of 2019 or 2020, I mentioned something about how a pandemic could happen at any moment, and one must be prepared for such thing as subsequent events would painfully remind us. I don't know why I never read the great influenza, the story of the deadliest pandemic in history, but I did read it in March 2020 in those early days of lockdown and was just fucking blown away. It's an incredible book. If you read, you could have consumed zero news over the last three years, spent zero time talking about the pandemic, learning about the pandemic, and just read this book, and don't effectively

exactly what to do. All the mistakes policymakers would make, all the mistakes people would make, all the things to be worried about, the things not to be worried about. Basically everything you would need to do, you could have learned from this book, which brings up a quote from Harry Truman

that I talk about in today's interview with John Barrett. Truman said the only new thing in the world is the history you have yet to read. If you haven't read either of these books, man, you are just doing yourself a major disservice. You absolutely have to read them. We carry both of them here at the Painted Porch, but they probably make great audio books to sit down and read them. They are incredible books. And John is a fantastic writer. He dropped out of graduate school, became a prize-winning author and journalist. There's also a football coach. In fact, the first story he ever sold was to a coach at the magazine about the way to change blocking assignments at the line of scrimmage. And fascinating career that as we talk about in today's interview wasn't just writing,

but also doing, he's not some pin and in philosopher as the Stokes would say, but has in fact deeply influenced the pandemic response, dating back to the Bush administration, he's changed flood prevention across the American South. He's worked with the National Academies and several government entities on influenza preparedness and response. He's worked on disaster response.

He was the keynote speaker at events like the White House Conference on the Mississippi Delta. He's spoken at the National War College, the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard Business School. And he's the co-originator of what is now called the Buywater Institute at Tulane University, incredible writer, incredible thinker. I was honestly too intimidated to ask to have him on the podcast for quite some time, and Jane, who helps me produce in book these episodes, suggested it and made it happen, and I'm very glad she did. You can go to his website, johnembary.com, convolumon twitter at johnembary.

And of course, you can pick up rising tide and the great influenza two books. I highly recommend here at the painted porch. I will link to them in the show notes and please pick them up wherever books are sold and leave them and make decisions based on this wonderful writing. Well, I am very excited to chat. I was, I want to ask you a million questions about both books, but a somewhat obscure point that I thought I would start with.

Our work is more similar than people might think in that I would argue that the most interesting characters in Rising Tide and the great influenza also happen to be closet stoics, not just in practice, but we're deeply familiar with the philosophy, William Osler, and then of course the Percy family were students of stoic philosophy. I don't know if you knew that. Well, now that you mentioned it, yeah, Osler, Sermling was the major figure, not that huge of figure in the book, but Sermling, one of the most important people in the history of medicine.

And the Perseys, they didn't realize they had studied it, but they certainly lived, lived it. Yeah. William Alexander Percy turns Walker Percy onto Stoicism. There's a, there's, and then in the movie go where there's a, there's a number of Marcus Aurelius quotes, which, which sort of you can skip right past if you're not expecting them, because it doesn't seem like that's what the book would be about. But I sort of see stoicism as the through line through the sort of Percy family, not necessarily super inspirational. There's kind of a tragic fatalism to them as a family, I think, that you might call stoic. The fatalism, you definitely pick up on.

That was actually another thing I thought was really interesting in rising tide. Again, somewhat of an obscure point. But you sort of talk about, there was this idea of noblesso blees in the sort of wealthy families at that time. And I was, I think about this all the time since I read the book. There's this moment sort of, it's kind of, is it after the flood where basically they're sort of settling some of the accounts

or the insurance claims from people after the great flood of 1927. And you basically talk about how this is the moment where all of those theories and ideas and ideals are sort of portrayed in practice. When they actually had the opportunity to do the right thing and they kind of didn't do the right thing. My remember-

Well, the pro-sees weren't really directly involved in that. And of course, it wasn't insurance precisely. But, you know, if you wanted to talk about that flood, might be useful for your listeners to just have basics of just how enormous an event was. Let's do it. Okay. of just how enormous an event was. Let's do it.

Okay. The population of Guthrie was a little under 120 million. And it killed people from Virginia to Oklahoma, which is all part of the Mississippi River Basin. It flooded almost 1% of the entire population of the country out of their homes. In terms of percent of GDP, the actual numbers don't sound that impressive, but as a percentage of gross domestic product, it was like triple the cost of Sandy, 40% bigger than Katrina. Katrina was otherwise the greatest natural disaster kind of event to hit the United States. So it was absolutely enormous and had

tremendous repercussions in national politics and displacement of African Americans to the north, not displacement. They didn't start to create migration, but there's a major spur to it. Elected, over-president, so forth and so on. Change the view of the responsibility of the federal government toward people who were suffering through no fall of their own. Just one last detail, give you an illustration of that. In 1905, the last yellow fever epidemic to hit the United States, we already knew how to handle yellow fever. And We already knew how to handle yellow fever. In Havana, we cut yellow fever deaths to zero in a year, zero.

But before the U.S. public health service would come to New Orleans to save the lives of American citizens, New Orleans had to pay all their expenses in advance. It had to be in the bank. So 1927, not a single federal ballot, not one went to help anyone of close to a million refugees, 700,000 people who were living in refugee camps. So the things changed after that, and the flood was a major factor in that change. Yeah, you could kind of argue that the two, although the books are very different, what they actually have in common is that they're about massive collective action problems, that in both cases, the idea of, we'll let the people who it's affecting handle it,

or we'll let it be a regional thing, that logic falls woefully short because it affected everyone, and it needed a massive collective response. And in fact, also collective prevention. But what I kind of took away from the two books is, this is what happens when we're sort of vulcanized or separated in our own little whether we're thinking about

towns or cities or states when we're not coming together collectively to solve problems when we think it's only somebody else's problem, you end up creating enormous amounts of collective suffering. I go with that. Yeah. I just thought what I thought was so interesting about rising tide was you sort of profile that these families who were they kind of saw themselves the person is being one of them is like we run our little area and we treat people well, but it's all kind of on the honor system. We're not actually obligated to do anything. We do it because it's the

right thing to do. This is kind of the older school mentality. And then that just falls woefully short when nature rages, as you say, and you need something much more systemic and much more collective to address the enormity of the problem. I think that's true. And also not to give the parentheses too much credit. Leroy Percy was the father and a major figure. He actually defeated the plan in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

Yeah. You know, he was a friend of William Howard Taft. He hosted the Bayer Hunt for Teddy Rose Zelp, where, you know, I mean, he was an actor. Where the Teddy Bear comes from. He was there when they, when they, when they discovered the Teddy Bear, so to speak. Exactly. You know, he had connections to London and New York and Chicago financial community and so forth. I mean, he was a major player.

And he talked a good game on Noblesse of Bleach. His son, William Alexander Perse, who later adopted Walker Perse and his brothers and they were blood kin as well. He was a poet. He actually believed the stuff about no bless of deliche. Yeah. When it came to reality, self-interest for a loroi perse trumped the idea no bless of deliche. And he even betrayed his own son out of self-interest and what he perceived as the best interest of the area. Yeah, I think what's remarkable when I read the book

the first time it was sort of like, how could you watch the scale of the enormity of the suffering of that flood? And you sort of, you read about the past and you're like, man, they just let people, they were just like, sorry, you know, like, it just happens. You know, you sort of, you go, how could people have been so unfeeling or indifferent to the suffering of others? And then it takes something like COVID-19 to go, oh, that's how we do it.

to go, oh, that's how we do it. I know we get to COVID. We will. But you know what I mean? You think it was so different back then, but of course it wasn't. I'm reading this biography of Truman right now. And he has this line that he keeps repeating Truman. He says, the only thing new is the history you don't yet know. And I feel like that's both the flood of 1927 and then of course the great influenza

as well. Well, people don't change, you know, human motivation and so forth. They remain the same, you know, whether it's love or greed or admission, their constants. When I guess nature doesn't really change, right? Floods, plagues, wars. These would have been very familiar topics to a Marcus Relas. I mean, Marcus Relas lives through the Antonine plague, the great flood of Rome, and in invasion by foreign tribes. So there'd be nothing that would have happened in the mid-20 or early 20th century, or that's

happened in the 2000s that they'd have been like, wow, that's new. Well, again, you know, there's a line in rising tide, which really applies to everything. I say the river is perfect and it's not perfect. No, man makes a mistake against the river. It will find it and exploit it. So you just substitute nature for river as we are discovering and have discovered. Yeah. So what brought you to right rising tide?

What made you decide to tell that story? Well, that might be the single question I get asked that most often. Oh. And I always give the same answer, which is true. I grew up in Rhode Island, so it seemed perfectly natural. We want to write about the Mississippi River. And the reality is, even in Rhode Island, the river is such an important part of American history. If you have any

interest in American history, it's just central to it. So I always want to write about the river and then the question is You know, how do you address that in a way that? You know penetrates the society and plus you know get someone to read it and I was writing a sports column for an alternative weekly in New Orleans on the 50th anniversary of the flood and New Orleans didn't flood the rest of Louisiana did so 100,000 refugees

but The alternative weekly ran a special issue on it with all these photographs because the guy ran it was from Greenville, Mississippi, where, which was on the war, and those photographs just kind of stuck in my mind and, you know, seemed like something to explore, and the more you got into it, the better the story was. I mean, for example, one of the reasons with them, I don't want to oversimplify, but to guarantee that they wouldn't flood that neurons wouldn't flood, they dynamited the levee outside the city and flooded out all the people in St. Bernard

and Black men parishes below it. They talk about self-interest. And that was actually an entirely unnecessary act which the experts knew, but they did it anyway. So, you know, you got things like that going on. And it's just a great story. And, you know, the purses whom we were talking about earlier. Those are really unusual people.

You do not find characters like Leroy Percy very often. You know, the characters in the New Orleans part of the story, yeah, you can find them in any city, any time. But Leroy Percy, no, he stands alone, you know, in the rising tide, you know, it's not really a good guy in the entire book. Yeah, frankly. The influenza book, there are a lot of good guys. They're overwhelmed by nature and their inability to move fast enough to do anything, but at least they're good guys and sympathetic figures.

Yeah, I wonder if the other thing those two stories have in common going again to the idea that the only thing new is the history you don't yet know. Why is it that too such enormously significant representative, informative events get so forgotten? You would think that these would be moments that would be seared into the consciousness, not just of the public at large, but of policy figures most of all, because they would never want it to happen again. What's so remarkable about both these tragedies is that we immediately seem to go about completely forgetting that they ever happened. Well, with the flood, I think something you said earlier speaks to why it's an

ormany was never just never registered. And it's because people saw it as a local event because their place was underwater. So their entire focus was on where they lived. And incidentally, the Mississippi River at its widest point, and 1927 was almost 100 miles across. I mean, it was a true in one state. You know, another thing is that until relatively recently, a few decades ago, historians tended to write about what people did to people, didn't write much about what nature did to people. They didn't write much about what nature did to people. Oh, interesting. So you can sort of see in terms of actual scholarship

why there wasn't a lot about it. Certainly in blues music, there's plenty of, plenty of music about the 1927 flood and levy breaking and so forth and so on and even Randy Newman We had a had a great song called Louisiana 1927 Which I used to listen to every day when I was writing the book that probably several times today when I was writing the book I got a nice note from them to The influence of pandemic was different when I was writing the book. I got a nice note from them too. The influence of pandemic was different. You know, again, for those listeners who don't know, worldwide it killed 50 to 100 million people.

Population was much smaller than so, through adjust for population. That's the equivalent of somewhere between 250, 225 to 450 million people today. Astronomical, much, much deadlier than COVID. COVID's bad enough. That one, you know, it did fade pretty quickly. And yet it was always in the back of people's minds. I think if you lived through it, for example, when I first started that book and we were talking about 1997, so it was quite a while ago.

And none who was 14 or 15 at the time, who's still alive back then. And I told her that I was writing about it and she grasped her at chest and said, it's the only time she'd ever seen her father cry. That was because a couple across the street with four kids, both parents died. So it certainly didn't slip from her consciousness. She never told me about it, but it was ingrained in her.

And Chris Reissler, who wrote Berlin stories from which one of the greatest movies ever made Cabaret was based on. He was living in Berlin in 1933 when the Nazis took over. in 1933, when the Nazis took over. And he compared that to influenza. He said, you could feel it like influenza in the bones. So he certainly understood and expected his readers to understand at least the 1933, 15 years afterwards, the kind of tarot and deep seeded on euciness that came with the pandemic. So, you know, that's on the plus side.

In addition, apparently, there was a fair number of, like, really cheap fiction, fair amount of cheap fiction, which included influenza. So all that's on the plus in terms of memory. Yeah. The other side just practically know, very, very few literary pieces of fiction in any language about it. And John Dose Passo is one of my favorite writers and who got influence on a troop ship going to Europe, which was one of the worst places you could possibly get it. And his entire body of work, he's about one sentence about it. So I don't really have an explanation for that.

I've heard many speculative explanations, yeah. But nothing that I would voice myself. Yeah, there was a line in Mad Men that I think about, where he, Don Draper says something like, uh, this never happened. Uh, it's going to shock you how bad this never happened, right? He was talking, he was talking to Peggy about how how everyone was going to pretend that this thing never occurred, even though they were all complicit and even though they all knew it happened. I wonder how much of it is also like, these weren't exactly heroic moments of human greatness,

although obviously in the greater influenza, you talk about the medical heroes, but for the most part, you know, these were enormous tests that we failed as a society. And I wonder how much of it is a kind of a collective forgetting because if we forget about it, then we don't have to be accountable for it. Well, those are some of the speculative reasons. And I think there's something to that.

The other thing, though, is the brevity. We've been living with COVID for two and a half years. And trust me, it's still going on. the pandemic, you know, probably two-thirds of the total deaths occurred in a period of 15 weeks. And that's worldwide. And any given community, it was faster than that. You know, six to ten weeks in any particular city. And when it was good, there were waves, as we've gone through waves. And some of those waves that came back were pretty severe. But they didn't know there were waves coming. Sure. In the future. So the real intensity of the experience was October 1918 and you have a pretty big distraction. World War I. Yeah.

No, that's, that's interesting. I didn't think about that. The, the blitzkrieg nature of it made it all the more horrible, but thus, you know, easier to forget as just a singular awful period as opposed to an ongoing, roiling thing, the way that say COVID has been, or even that the flood was, that it, that it didn't unfold slowly and unfolded quickly, makes it easier to set, sort of tell yourself it was a terrible dream. Yeah.

I mean, a river flood is a lot different from a hurricane. Yeah. Hurricane with the exception of Harvey hanging over Houston, Dumbin' all that rain. I mean, usually it just passes right over you. What, you know, you lived in New Orleans. I'm looking out at the Mississippi River right now. Obviously we're familiar with hurricanes. Usually they're a matter of hours. Right.

What they leave in their way is something different. But a river flood, particularly on something like the Mississippi River, which starts out on New Year's Day flooding, you know, Pittsburgh. And in June is still flooding places in Louisiana. And remember Pittsburgh's part of the Mississippi River system. And you can watch that flood crest coming down River at you. And builds up the suspense because you think, this is going to hold us, that is that lovey-gonna-hold,

and so forth and so on. In 1927, none of them held. Right. Is this thing on? Check one, two, one, two. There y'all! I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo. Just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Keep a Bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a Bag Love.

But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know. So I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night. But I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you.

Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, you can listen early and app free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Yeah, so going back to this idea of like this is happening to other people or we're going to flood this other part, which is I guess true in both books, the idea of like it's not happening to me. It's happening to someone else.

I think in both books, there's this kind of tension at your body. Just in the way that nature is this sort of perennial obstacle, it seemed like getting people to care about other people is another timeless theme of human history. Like how do you get people to care about something that's happening far away from them or that they're not going to personally experience the consequences of right away. This kind of, this very, it's both the human process of externalizing, the consequences of our choices on other people,

and then also the indifference to suffering elsewhere. That struck me as a very human obstacle that we continue to struggle with. Well, I'm not sure I'd agree with you on that, that not only in this country, but elsewhere, I think there's a lot of concern. I mean, take night, the donations to Ukraine, most recently.

Sure. You can go back to the tsunami in Asia more than a decade ago now, but there was plenty about pouring of contributions. Katrina, you still have volunteers coming to Katrina from elsewhere in the United States trying to help people still, two to 17 years later. But in the first four or five years, you know, there are probably more church groups running around the city trying to help from from Iowa or a California wherever then there were citizens in the first days after Katrina.

And plenty of charitable contributions. So I'm not sure that I fully agree with what you said about. You know, people can get a new herd to stuff, but I think the initial sentiment is pretty good from most people. And, you know, I was involved in the pandemic preparedness planning and the Bush administration and very peripherally in the response to the Obama administration when we thought H1N1, Swine flu is going to be something. Well, let's leave that point. We can get to that later if you want to, but let's go ahead and ask another question. No, no, I think that's a fair point.

I guess it's what side of things are you going to look at? Are you going to look at the indifference in the selfishness or are you going to look at? Are you going to look at the indifference in the selfishness or are you going to look at the charity and the generosity? And you can sort of choose what story you want to tell yourself about how we've responded to certain disasters. COVID being a good example. Well, the point I was going to make when I said I was involved in planning the preparedness response and so forth.

Was that, you know, for 15 years between, I guess, 2004, when the influenza book came out and I got involved in the effort. And 2018, I would talk to groups about preparedness. And one of the points I would always make is one of the big questions we have is whether or not healthcare workers are going to respond. When their own lives are at risk and not only a question whether they have the courage to put their own lives at risk. But what about them going home and putting their kids

and spouses at risk? So it was entirely unknown whether or not healthcare workers, particularly in emergency rooms and so forth, and we're simply gone vacate. Yeah, obviously that didn't happen. We know the answer to that question and that profession performs with absolute terrorism and continues to perform that way,

although by now they're worn down to a threat. So that is the best of humanity. I think most real disasters generally bring out the best in people. There are always some instances where the worst surfaces. But that's one of the reasons why I wanted to write about both the flood and the pandemic, because in a crisis situation, you see what a society is really like. Yeah. No, all the rhetoric is washed away,

and you see what the reality is based on behavior. So that's the part of the disaster that interested me. It wasn't so much the narrative of it. You know, this time around was quite different because of the politicization. You know, there was essentially no politicization in 1918 for multiple of reasons. This time around the response obviously became politicized. And as a result hundreds of thousands of Americans are dead, we should be alive.

Yeah, you could argue that the disaster or difficult times brings out both the best and the worst in people and that often the best are sort of heroically attempting to save us from the worst, right? That's sort of that's sort of the the tension and the selflessness of that heroism, which is not only, are they putting their lives at danger, not only are they sacrificing and struggling and working, but this sacrifice and struggle is, you know, might be totally unappreciated, might be totally dismissed, might be,

you know, might even be punished for it. There is this tragedy of, well, actually, you know, might even be punished for it. There is this tragedy of, well, actually, you know what? Look, I wrote this down when I read, when I read Rising Tide a Long time ago, I do note cards. This is a line in Rising Tide that I've thought about. You said, unless one embraces the truth, one can only be comic or tragic. One cannot be heroic. Yeah, it's one of my better lines, thanks.

Great lines. I appreciate that. Yeah, I got to remember that. I could remember that. But no, it's like that heroic selflessness is based on, you know, seeing the world or the problem as it is, not as you would want it to be, not as you would like things to be, but it's this sort of unflinching facing of the enormity of what sits before you.

And those who don't want to do that because it's inconvenient, because it might infer a certain amount of blame, you cetera, et cetera. They forego the opportunity to be part of the solution and become, by definition, part of the problem. And obviously, Stoicism comes in there. Yeah. We can make that blanket pretty easily, just as you can describe as truly stoic, you know, many of the healthcare workers who continue to, you know, I mean, for a period of 18 months, the pressure on them was nonstop. There's

considerably less pressure right now, but those of us who know something about the virus have a lot of concerns about the next few months. Yeah, there's a there's a quote I feel like I've talked about it on 50 of these episodes, but there's a quote in Marcus Realis' Meditations that he writes during the Antonine plague, which they think is probably a smallpox or you know, so some some variant of that. But he says there's two types of plagues. There's the one that can destroy your life and the one that can destroy your character. And I think that sort of encapsulates a little bit of what you see in these stressful situations, which is there is the part of whatever it is, whether it's a flood or a virus that threatens you physically that puts you in danger.

And then there is this part that challenges you ethically, that challenges you compassionately, the challenges you like you were saying for La Roy Percy, where your self interest is suddenly being challenged, perhaps your identity is being challenged, perhaps your political goals are being challenged. And it's really an interesting question of, you know, is this thing gonna make you better or worse? Are you gonna step up and meet the moment or are you gonna have your reasons

why you can't do that? I mean, yeah, it's true of any crisis situation. You know, it's true on a football team. When you're beating everybody by 30 points, three or four games in a row, everybody loves everybody. You lose a game by a point, then you lose another game by three points, then you start to see what the character of that football team is. Or, you know, the same thing applies in the rest of life too.

Yes. Right. Well, I love that expression. It's not a principle unless it costs you money, you know? And then I think you see that during COVID, you certainly saw it in the in the Great Influenza where people love to talk about how we're a solid brotherhood, how we're all the same team, and we got to take care of people. And then it's like, but I already planned this parade, you know, and then suddenly you're in a position where what you believe or what you think or what the experts are telling you is the right thing is in conflict with what, with the deposits that you've put down or with the thing that you're really looking forward to or the with the deposits that you've put down, or with the thing that you're

really looking forward to, or the wedding that you've been planning for six months. And now all of a sudden, you have to, you have to ask yourself, well, do I really believe this now that it's inconvenient to me personally? Well, yeah, yeah. That's true. I mean, talk specifically about 1918. It was real chaos. And the chaos, I think, came about because of a lack of leadership and level of fear. Already mentioned it was much more deadly than COVID. Excuse me. I just recovered from COVID.

Oh, I'm sorry. The one too bad. The unlike today, the most vulnerable population was children on the five years old in 1918. The second most vulnerable population was children under five years old in 1918. The second most vulnerable population was children under 10. And the third most vulnerable was people in their 20s. Totally unlike today.

And you know, the case more to Ali was much higher. And of course, medicine couldn't do anything. So that in itself, obviously you've got something And of course, medicine couldn't do anything. So that in itself, obviously, you've got something to be frightened of, real fear. At the same time, because we were in war, both national and local leadership almost everywhere lied about the disease. You know, they actually said things like, this is ordinary influenza by another name.

It was referred to as Spanish flu. It's only influenza, you repeat throughout the book, which was very, you know, it's just like the flu. We said most recently. Yeah, so when you were being lied to and you see, I mean, my best examples in Philadelphia, which is city, I write about it some way. I didn't do city after city because it would have been redundant. It was basically the same thing happening in most places. But when they finally, Phil Dell was one of the hardest hits that he's on the country, like 15,000

that's most of them died a matter a few weeks. And when they finally, belatedly closed schools, theaters, saloons, band public meetings, et cetera, et cetera. One of the newspapers actually said, this is not a public health measure. You have no reason for fear, no cause for fear, or a long. I mean, how stupid did they think people were?

Well, when this is the official announcements in declarations you were hearing, that you got no reason to worry. This is ordinary influenza by another name. And literally priests are driving porous drawn carts down the street calling upon people bring out their dead. You know, it's not ordinary influenza. So you are left to your own devices.

There was no effort to rally, I mean, there were efforts to rally communities, but they were generally unsuccessful because people were being lied to. And I think ultimately society is based on trust. When trust evaporates, which in that case happened. Then society began to disintegrate. You know, how bad did it get? There was, I quoted a guy named Victor Vaughn who was a serious sober scientist

not given to overestatement. Before the war was a long time being in the University of Michigan Medical School. During the war, he was in the army uh, had a division of communicable diseases. And he said if the current rate of acceleration continues for a few more weeks, civilization could easily disappear from the face of the era. That's how bad it got. Now, just as he was writing it, it peaked. Uh didn't face that here, but what we did face was the decline and trust. We're being lied to by Trump. And those who supported him thought Fouche was lying. So, you know, there was a recent study of 177 countries, maybe two months ago now, that found the countries that had the most success against influenza. It didn't matter whether they

were authoritarian, didn't matter if they were communists, didn't matter if they were democratic. It didn't matter if they were communists, it didn't matter if they were democratic. The ones that had the most success were the ones where they had the most trust in institutions and the most trust in their fellow citizens. We did a very poor job and we ran pretty low on that list in both counts. If you have people telling the truth, then you're gonna trust the institution. Right. And probably gonna trust your fellow citizens as well,

cause the whole atmosphere is different. on a trust your fellow citizens as well because the whole atmosphere is different. You know, the two lessons that, and you know, as I said, I was involved in planning the response to pandemics and so forth. And when I went to all these meetings, and as I said in the afterward to the book, the most important thing is to tell the truth. And in some cases that happened here, but not enough people. There was this significant, you know, Fauci always told the truth. He wasn't always 100% right. Obviously, the messaging was very

screwed up, not all that was politicization, but most of it was. Yeah, it strikes me that the biggest failures in COVID, it wasn't necessarily lies. It was anytime people tried to think about the psychological implications of how they were telling the truth. Like, for instance, I have a three year old who just finally was able to be vaccinated like three weeks ago, right? So we were the group that had to wait the absolute longest, right? And when you would read things like when they would say, well, one of the vaccines is ready, but we don't want to put them both out at the same, we don't want to put one out before

the other one because that would be confusing, right? So we're going to wait an extra month and then put them out at the same time. And this is obviously also the part early on in the pandemic where they were like, don't wear masks, masks, so it worked, et cetera. It wasn't lies, but it was any time they were trying to guess how people might respond to what they were thinking about saying that they got themselves in trouble because, as you said, they weren't telling the truth as they knew it in the moment. They were almost being too smart or manipulative would be the wrong word, but they were essentially lying by trying to tell people the truth. It's a weird way to do things.

Well, I can't remember if I actually said this in the afterward, but it's a line that I use whenever I give talks and say you don't manage the truth, you tell the truth. Yes. I think the only time that, you know, I would be more generous toward, you know, Fauci in Berks, then perhaps you are. I think the mask issue was a big one. Because in that case, a lot of the motivation to say don't wear a mask was to preserve it for healthcare workers. And I think we'd have been better served in the long run if that had been clearer. Right. That was managing the truth.

Instead of saying, we don't want you to wear masks for this reason, they are saying, don't wear masks. So it's the difference between telling the full truth, which is complicated and a partial truth, which is inching towards not the truth. Yeah, on the other hand, you know, there, there wasn't a lot of data. And in fact, in the early days, I also was saying don't wear masks.

And I was, my comment was based on 1918 data there. It was actual data there. They knew, they actually ran a very good experiments and they knew that putting a mask on somebody who was already sick protected people who were well. But there were places that did have mandated masking and they found that for the general, it wasn't worth the effort. Now the mask back there are multiple reasons for that. So when I said it, it was database and the data change and I changed my position. So it wasn't entirely just the idea of protecting the supply for

preserving it for healthcare workers. There was a real question early on whether or not mass were useful. So it's like I'd be a little bit more generous to vouch chain dollars. I would agree with that. That is the tricky element of anything that is subject to changing events, which is what was true at one moment may not be true at a future moment. And when you are up against people who are either stupid or, you know, acting stupid for demagogic purposes, that inconsistency is a disadvantage, right? When you're saying this and then you're saying that, both could be true, but that's hard for the public to handle.

And so I think anytime, it's like any time you're trying to outsmart the public, it usually comes back to bite you. I would tend to find. Well, again, back in, I think I end part of the afterward. It's not the last line in the afterward, but it's near the last. I said that Lincoln said it best. And said it first, you know, you know, and I'm sure all your listeners know the quote I'm referring to. It's exactly what the point you are making. What I think is interesting about your trajectory that I think we'd be better served with, if

more people did this. In the cases of both your books, you spent a lot of time writing something that's both interesting, commercially successful, practical, you know, that works as a book, but that you didn't, that knowledge wasn't just used for artistic purposes. I'm interested in your choice to get involved. You were on one of the river and flood control boards in New Orleans, obviously rising, obviously the great influenza in it, having a pretty large political impact. How did you think about your decision to be not just a writer? I don't mean that in the condescending sense, but to actually get involved in the ideas

to break the separation of church and state so to speak. To refer to another one of my less successful actually, I think it's my best book, the one you just mentioned, but I have written other books besides the two that we're talking about, but the two we're discussing were certainly commercially much more successful than AALs. Two were discussing were certainly commercially much more successful than a else Well, you know, I live in New Orleans, you know after Katrina I became and I was actually I guess certainly the first person to publicly say The levees just broke they were designed, they should have held the storm. And that, and because of rising tide was pretty well known, even before then, I became

one of numerous folks, people, for the city know, road op-eds and the times got interviewed and so forth and so on. And the state's congressional delegation asked me to cheer a working group on flood protection right after the storm, I guess right after one of my times' outfits. And obviously I knew something about floods from writing a book on flood. I knew that particular request for this working group, they wanted to use my name for cover, political cover. I knew that. But it also gave me a title that I could use to advance my

own agenda. So I happily accepted that and they went on to propose things that the Washington Post or the editorial calling them Louise Anneluders for our somewhat, you know, overly ambitious requests for federal help in terms of the flood protection part of it, one that bad. But, you know, after that, they created a new kind of levy board. The state had to pass a state constitutional amendment to create it. It was a result of a citizen's rebellion.

Levy boards all over the country are probably, you know, often primarily political. They spend a lot of money. And the boards themselves are not necessarily professional. There was criticism of the Orleans Lovie board before the storm. And this new board was going to be really pretty extraordinary if things worked well and they ended up where anyway I was asked to the ad you apply for it or and I was asked to apply and then get nominated. I'll give you a sense of who was on it. We had a past president American society civil engineers. We had the chief from California. We had the chief engineer California's 1500 miles of the levies. From North Carolina, we had the chairman

of the National Academy of Sciences working group on coastal risk-bridge production. We had a meteorologist who pioneered storm surge modeling. We had an engineer from Louisiana who was so well regarded the state engineering society named an award after him. We had the author of college textbooks on engineering. This was an extraordinary board. This was entirely unlike the usual levy board, which is appointed or at least chosen largely.

They have to be appointed by the governor, but they are chosen by a state legislator. We had a nominating committee that involved the Dean's Acologes of Engineering in the state and so forth and so on. Yeah, had to be nominated by this committee, the government chose nominees off this committee. So that was pretty unusual. And I thought my role on that board was really to work in Washington and in the media because

our fight was not only in terms of engineer and making sure the levies were built right this time around. And we had plenty of engineers on the board who could do that. But we also had to get funding. And you know, that, I, my first book was about politics. In Washington, I'd covered Congress. I knew a lot of members of Congress testified before Congress and so forth. So I thought I could be useful there and I could be useful in the media.

So I did that. And then of course, the, I was the architect of a lawsuit against 97 oil gass and pipeline companies for their role on coastal land loss. You know, Louise and it's lost 2,000 square miles of land. That's a stated Delaware. If you put Delaware between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, we wouldn't need any

lobes. So not all that land loss by any means was caused by the oil industry, but a lot of it was. So yeah, the Stoics talked somewhat sneeringly about what they called the pen and ink philosophers, the people who only talked about the ideas. So you, you seem interesting to me, and I think inspiring to me as someone who writes about the issues, and you wrote about them,

like I would say as journalistically and objectively as possible. And then I just love the fact that after the books were done, you then went and did something about the ideas in the books, which strikes me as an obligation that I wish more writers would pick up. Well, I thought, you know, I never wrote the book with an agenda. And all these events occurred after and unrelated to the books. But yeah, I did feel an obligation. That and I kind of like to fight. So, I mean, get back to the lawsuit, the levy board filed.

You know, I mean, the state legislature tried to pass laws, retroactively after the lawsuits filed to kill the lawsuit. So I got involved in that. But you know, writing, as you know, is extremely isolating. Yes. Particularly if you're writing history, meaning you're not interviewing anybody. What are you doing is going to archives.

But everyone's dead. Yeah. And in these days, most of the stuff, you don't even go to the archive, you just go online and a lot of these sources are available online, primary sources I'm talking about. Yeah. Even a lot of primary sources is available online, primary sources, I'm talking about. Yeah. Even the primary, a lot of primary sources are available online. So you don't even meet a librarian

or an archivist anymore. So there is a part of me that likes to get out in the world. So I was more than happy, I guess, to serve on that board. When it strikes me, the other skill that you brought to the table, as you said, that other, I think, writers and creatives clearly, COVID was an example of what happens, not just when trust evaporates, but when government of both parties at effectively every level. And this includes the scientific community, when they are terrible at communicating, everyone suffers. When they can't effectively and clearly,

and cogently get out the information that people need to get out. It doesn't matter what the trust is. Even when people do trust and want the information, if they can't fucking understand it, doesn't do many people much good. And I think one place that creative artistic people who have an understanding of the audience where we need to, I think, contribute where our call to service should be is how do we communicate these very urgent,

potentially life-saving ideas to people in a way that they can act on, because that's not just going to happen. You can't just assume that's going to happen. Well, I'm not sure I agree with you about the scientific communities to all years on that. I think the problem was mixed messaging. I think most of the people who would appear as TV commentators, and who, you know, I was on a fair amount, but not nearly as much. For example, as Mike Oster, a home who's a friend of mine, I think Mike always told the

truth. And he's, I know he always told the truth. And he was pretty dead on. There are other people like, I don't know Peter Hotez at all. You never met him. Never emailed the exchange with him. But, you know, there's another guy who I think was very good. And, you know, most of the scientific community that appeared on TV was pretty clear, pretty consistent in the messaging. And there wasn't all of it. The problem was, it'd be one thing if they had been echoing what you're getting from the White House. Yes.

What about the CDC or whomever? Yeah. CDC did step on itself on too many occasions. You know, first because of political interference and the Trump administration, but, you know, unfortunately, but unfortunately, you know, they were not very clear in the last year and a half hurt themselves with, and a lot of things weren't clear, you know,

but you just coordinate the damn message, that question of even managing the truth, is just making sure that you come up with a clear message. Yes. Not a 15 square grid with different intersecting things to figure out what it says. I was thinking about this the other day because you mentioned people are concerned about where it's going. It strikes me as not surprising that on on the one hand, we're like, people have

given up. They're not caring about the pandemic. And then they're like, what's it called these days? Oh, yeah, it's BA 7 4 2 3 6 4. You know, it's like, at least on hurricanes, they give them very clear names. You know what I mean? That nobody calls it hurricane Omnichran variant 7, you know what I mean? Nobody calls it hurricane Omnichran variant 7, you know, the inability to clearly and effectively communicate outside of your space and your jargon and think about, this is a normal person driving to work, listening to six minutes of NPR. How can I effectively communicate what they need to know in this instance? That is a critical part of a disaster response that has nothing to do with truth or untruth. It just has to do with

making your damn point clearly You said that perfectly clearly Well last last question for you I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one.

I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one.

I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not going to be in the next one. I'm not write any more books? Could you do us a favor? No.

Could you write about something fun or positive maybe and then predict that happening? Well, at the moment, I'm working on two books. I've been working on a book on Louisiana Coast, so I'm a follow up to Rising Tide, I guess, by definition. on Louisiana coast, so I'm a file up to rising tide, I guess, by definition. Before the COVID, I put that aside to write a book on COVID, now I actually put the COVID book aside to go back to the first book. So both of them are events that will have already happened, or we've already known about it. So I wouldn't be too concerned. already known about it. So I wouldn't be too concerned. No, there are going to be more pandemics. And it is possible that this virus actually becomes more dangerous.

It doesn't always get better. That's a, that's a, an undisputed truth that's been spread. That's correct. You know, I think likelihood, there's a reasonable likelihood that that they will continue in that direction. You know, there was an AP story this week, I think, or last week that quoted people saying, well, it's really like influenza at this point.

And in the case fatality rate, if you're vaccinated, if you boost it and so forth, that's probably true. But the reality is, it is so much more transmissible than influenza. You know, we're still, it's still killing people at the rate of 140,000 a year right now. And the worst in the year ever, I think, in the U.S. for Influenza outside of 1918 was, I guess, 2017 maybe. We had 61,000 that And we also in this really concerns me is is long COVID We don't know what kind of burden that is going to be

All we know is it's going to be a big one We know people who have very mild cases. It's more likely to get long COVID if you have a severe case, but even with a very mild case, there are still plenty of things. And so many people have gotten it, you're talking about millions, 10 millions, who are going to suffer this. You got the potential neurological damage, 10,000,000 who are going to suffer this. You get the potential neurological damage. You know, cardiovascular damage. Some of which doesn't surface for weeks or months and some of which may last. We don't know how long. We know some of it in some cases lasted for two years.

We'll last a lifetime. I mean, somebody your age, I don't think you would look forward to having neurological damage or for that matter cardiovascular damage. Even from a mild case, the hair so, you know, even at my age, I'm a lot older than you. I'm not that concerned about dying about this thing killing me. But I am damn concerned about the potential after effects. So I still, and we're in a certain situation, not in all situations by any stretch. And I think, you know, it did not be a bad thing for you. We're the same. Well, my book store where I carry your book, we are the loan holdout that still requires

masks. And it probably hasn't been great for business, but my thinking has been, I don't want to be part of the problem. And who am I to send these employees that work here every day? Why should I subject them to something that could affect them for the rest of their life if I can prevent it? That's not very stoic of you, is it? I think it's the definition of the, of the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius would say that, uh, we're made here for each other.

And he says, what's bad for the B is bad for the hive. And that is a, that, that influenced my response to the, the pandemic from day one, which is, I don't want to get, I don't want to get it, but I definitely don't want to get it and give it to anyone if I can prevent that from happening. What, John, I loved both books. I would say they shaped me in multiple ways. They introduced me to a number of characters that I wouldn't have known about otherwise. The person is being one William Osler being another.

And I've so enjoyed this conversation and you're writing and I can't wait for your other books, although I hope they don't predict the end of the world. Well, again, looking at it, the Mississippi River sea level rise and so forth. That might be the worst. No, I don't know how much longer New Orleans has, but then Miami will probably go before New Orleans. Great. Great.

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