Over the last 30 years of epidemics and pandemics, we learned nearly every lesson needed to stop this coronavirus outbreak in its tracks. We heeded almost none of them. The result is a pandemic on a scale never before seen in our lifetimes. In this captivating, authoritative, and eye-opening book, science journalist Debora MacKenzie lays out the full story of how and why it happened: the previous viruses that should have prepared us, the shocking public health failures that paved the way, the failure to contain the outbreak, and most importantly, what we must do to prevent future pandemics.
Debora MacKenzie has been reporting on emerging diseases for more than three decades, and she draws on that experience to explain how COVID-19 went from a potentially manageable outbreak to a global pandemic. Offering a compelling history of the most significant recent outbreaks, including SARS, MERS, H1N1, Zika, and Ebola, she gives a crash course in Epidemiology 101--how viruses spread and how pandemics end--and outlines the lessons we failed to learn from each past crisis. In vivid detail, she takes us through the arrival and spread of COVID-19, making clear the steps that governments knew they could have taken to prevent or at least prepare for this. Looking forward, MacKenzie makes a bold, optimistic argument: this pandemic might finally galvanize the world to take viruses seriously. Fighting this pandemic and preventing the next one will take political action of all kinds, globally, from governments, the scientific community, and individuals--but it is possible.
No one has yet brought together our knowledge of COVID-19 in a comprehensive, informative, and accessible way. But that story can already be told, and Debora MacKenzie's urgent telling is required reading for these times and beyond. It is too early to say where the COVID-19 pandemic will go, but it is past time to talk about what went wrong and how we can do better.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
A Note on the Virus xxi
1 Could We Have Stopped This Whole Thing at the Start?
1 (36)
2 What Are These Emerging Diseases, and Why Are They Emerging?
37 (29)
3 SARS.MERS---You Can't Say We Weren't Warned
66 (24)
4 Don't Blame the Bats
90 (24)
5 Wasn't the Pandemic Supposed to Be Flu?
114 (27)
6 So What Do We Do About Disease?
141 (41)
7 Things Fall Apart
182 (27)
8 The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened--- And How to Stop the Next One
209 (36)
Acknowledgments 245 (6)
Notes 251
Verfasser*innenangabe:
Debora MacKenzie
Jahr:
2020
Verlag:
New York , Hachette Books
Aufsätze:
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Systematik:
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NK.HI, FS.E
ISBN:
978-0-306-92424-8
2. ISBN:
0-306-92424-2
Beschreibung:
xxi, 279 Seiten
Schlagwörter:
COVID-19, Coronaviren, Präventivmedizin, 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease, Corona virus disease 2019, Coronaviridae, Coronavirus, Coronavirus disease 2019, Coronavirus-Krankheit-2019, Novel coronavirus pneumonia, Prophylaktische Medizin, Prävention / Medizin, Präventive Medizin, Vorsorgemedizin, Wuhan pneumonia
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Sprache:
Englisch
Fußnote:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-279).- Text englisch
Mediengruppe:
Buch