Newburyport Public Library

Pandemic, tracking contagions, from cholera to coronaviruses and beyond, Sonia Shah

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

Pandemic

bibliography

1151096690

Sonia Shah

tracking contagions, from cholera to coronaviruses and beyond

"Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either emerged or reemerged, appearing in places where they've never before been seen. Years before the sudden arrival of COVID-19, ninety percent of epidemiologists predicted that one of them would cause a deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. It might be Ebola, avian flu, a drug-resistant superbug, or something completely new, like the novel virus the world is confronting today. While it was impossible to predict the emergence of SARS-CoV-2--and it remains impossible to predict which pathogen will cause the next global outbreak--by unraveling the stories of pandemics past we can begin to better understand our own future, and to prepare for what it holds in store. In Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Coronaviruses and Beyond, Sonia Shah interweaves history, original reportage, and personal narrative to explore the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between cholera--one of history's most deadly and disruptive pandemic-causing pathogens--and the new diseases that stalk humankind today. She tracks each stage of cholera's dramatic journey, from its emergence in the South Asian hinterlands as a harmless microbe to its rapid dispersal across the nineteenth-century world, all the way to its latest beachhead in Haiti. Along the way she reports on the pathogens now following in cholera's footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers coming out of China's wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast. Delving into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world's deadliest diseases, Pandemic is a work of epidemiological history like no other, with urgent lessons for our own time."--provided by publisher

Preface tot he 2020 paperback edition -- Cholera's child : the microbes' comeback -- The jump : crossing the species barrier at wet markets, pig farms, and South Asian wetlands -- Locomotion : the global dissemination of pathogens through canals, steamships, and jet airplanes -- Filth : the rising tide of feculence, from nineteenth-century New York City to the slums of Port-au-Prince and the factory farms of south China -- Crowds : the amplification of epidemics in the global metropolis -- Corruption : private interests versus public health, or, How Aaron Burr and the Manhattan Company poisoned New York City with cholera -- Blame : cholera riots, AIDS denialism, and vaccine resistance -- The cure : the suppression of John Snow and the limits of biomedicine -- The revenge of the sea : the cholera paradigm -- The logic of pandemics : the lost history of ancient pandemics -- Tracking the next contagion : reimagining our place in a microbial world