What do You think about The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases In A World Out Of Balance (1995)?
I'll first say: this book is LONG. Having it on my Kindle meant that I did not really understand how long this book would be. It is definitely a commitment.Overall, it is terrifying. I would become a germophobe and start covering myself in anti-microbial hand sanitizers, but the germs will just evolve around it, become resistance, and kill me anyway. The best portions on this book are following the disease detectives from the CDC and other organizations as they investigated real-world outbreaks in the field. In this respect, the book was similar to Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and to a lesser extent The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story, and The Demon in the Freezer. However, I would say this book was more sophisticated and written a higher level (not for mass market readership) than those three. This is not a bad thing, as it was still very readable and not overly technical.Where the book did drag was some sections on disease outbreaks, especially where it go too much in to statistics. Several pages seemed to blur together as it seemed to just be statistic after statistic on multiple drug resistant tuberculosis. Absent the drama of following disease hunters in the field as they searched for the source of Machupo, Lassa, Ebola, Hanta, and other deadly disease outbreaks, this book seemed to drag significantly, making the 700+ page length seem unbearable.This book probably could have improved in this area, and one other, which would have been an updated edition that included more contemporary outbreaks, including the 2001 anthrax attacks, SARS, bird flu, and salmonella.
—James
We're screwed. The microbes are going to win. And make no mistake, climate change is going to accelerate our death spiral. (Though writing in the early 1990s, Garrett discusses the effects of global warming on pathogen populations and spread.)One of the most fascinating things about this story is that we are drastically underestimating the number of deaths from microbes and pathogens. If we actually had public health departments that were funded and functioned properly, if we funded public health and epidemiological studies and prevention efforts at the national level to match the need, if we did proper autopsies on everyone and performed the requisite tests, we would find the mortality rates from these infectious diseases jumping enormously. The truth is that many deaths from pathogens go unnoticed and unreported because they are not tested for; they are attributed to causes like pneumonia. (An example is Legionnaires' disease, which we associate with an isolated event in Philadelphia in 1976. But the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease probably killed thousands more people in the years after air conditioning systems were invented, and these deaths were attributed to other causes.)Garrett's book is a masterpiece of reporting and synthesis that, with the exception of chunks here and there, reads like a novel. Just one tiny example of her thoroughness is a footnote in which she lists every major influenza pandemic since the year 1173, along with the probable origin, geographical scope, and estimated mortality of each. This footnote has its own footnotes (four different sources). And the book has more than 100 pages of footnotes. Some of them have more depth of reporting than a news article in a major newspaper.The book is all the more astonishing in that due to an occupational injury, Garrett was unable to use a keyboard and wrote the whole thing in longhand.
—Lobstergirl
3 starsThis book is in-depth. The focus is on history, detailed facts and what we can do to prevent and cope with new maladies. Even if the book is no longer new, it still teaches a lot. We can learn from past mistakes. For me, parts read as a horror story. Then I calmed down. It first came out in 1994, and hey, we are still here! Did I become immune to the horror?! Or did it finally put me to sleep? In places, it sort of felt like a text book. My education was not adequate for a complete understanding of some of the medical discussions. It is heavily footnoted and has an index too. It is no sensational, quick read. It is both scary and deadening. Yes, the pun was intended. The book is directed toward serious readers who want the complete history of the new plagues that have confronted us in the last century, think the Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, the Marbug virus, Yellow fever, the Brazilian meningitis epidemic, Lassa fever, Ebola, swine flu, Legionnaires’ disease, sexually transmitted diseases and injecting drug users, AIDS, toxic shock syndrome and what can be done to stop this trend. Elimination of a disease threat is inextricably bound to economics, development and politics. The fight against disease is inextricably a fight against world poverty. Here is the truth: to complete this book I forced myself to read one chapter a day.*************************After Chapter 5: Definitely interesting but hard to read. I am no hypochondriac; I tend to treat pains with nonchalance in fact, but when you read this book you start worrying. You certainly get scared of traveling to Africa, and you wash your hands a lot. Have decided to read a chapter a day, which is about all I can handle, due only to my own fears. So far I have learned about Yellow fever, Ebola, Lassa fever, Marburg virus.....
—Chrissie
