Book The Pandemic Century. A History of Global Contagion from the Spanish Flu to Covid-19
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Despite all attempts to predict epidemics, they always catch us by surprise. It is no surprise that this book was written during the Covid-19 outbreak. However, The Age of Pandemics is not only about the coronavirus, but also about many other infectious diseases that humanity has faced. Some of these epidemics, such as the panic over Ebola in West Africa in 2014 and Zika the following year in Brazil, or the hysteria surrounding AIDS in the 1980s or Spanish flu in 1918, are well known to readers; Others, such as the pneumonic plague in the Mexican quarter of Los Angeles in 1924 or the parrot fever tragedy that swept the United States after the 1929 Wall Street crash, are less well known.
But whether we are familiar with them or not, each of these epidemics illustrates how decades of proven medical knowledge can suddenly be scrapped by new pathogens and the panic, hysteria and terror such epidemics can create in the absence of effective vaccines and medicines. We will find out how epidemics have unfolded over the past 100 years, search for zero patients and digital traces of pathogens together with infectious disease detectives, and even get closer to solving epidemiological mysteries.
«The Age of Pandemics» — is not only unique research in the history of science, medical sociology, disease ecology, virology, but also fascinating storytelling that skilfully combines dramatic stories of people and humanity.