Pandemic : tracking contagions, from cholera to ebola and beyond /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize | A New York Times Editor's Choice

"[A] grounded, bracingly intelligent study" -- Nature

Prizewinning science journalist Sonia Shah presents a startling examination of the pandemics that have ravaged humanity--and shows us how history can prepare us to confront the most serious acute global health emergency of our time.

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 Ebola 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 beachheadin 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.

"Shah proves a disquieting Virgil, guiding us through the hells ruled by [infectious diseases] . . . the power of Shah's account lies in her ability to track simultaneously the multiple dimensions of the public-health crises we are facing." -- The Chicago Tribune

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In this absorbing, complex, and ominous look at the dangers posed by pathogens in our daily lives, science journalist Shah (The Fever) cautions that there are no easy solutions. Of particular note is the challenge of tracking those pathogens that remain uncontained and which could overtake humans in a pandemic. As an example, Shah tracks the waterborne Vibrio cholerae bacterium from its home in the southwest Indian Ocean as it radiated from China and India to Paris in 1832, and then sailed to the U.S. with emigrants from cholera-plagued Europe heading to the eastern coast of North America-at the time there were 5,800 reported cases and nearly 3,000 deaths in New York City alone. Shah then meticulously dissects the conditions that made cholera's transmission so effective and new outbreaks inevitable, including filthy water, overcrowding, political corruption and inaction, scapegoating, and even the expedited expansion of the human population by the harnessing of fossil fuels. "For most of our history, we've been unaware of pathogens' role in our lives," Shah writes, adding that most of the challenges still lay ahead. Shah's warning is certainly troubling, and this important medical and social history is worthy of attention-and action. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

Globalization no longer applies only to interconnected economies. Prior to the 19th century, outbreaks of new diseases were largely confined to remote regions of the world, as the extent of spread was severely limited by slow modes of travel. Shah, a science journalist, describes in detail how the evolution of transportation--from the development of railroads to steamships (replacing sailing ships) and ultimately routine air travel--resulted in a revolutionary change. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria originating in the slums of India can now be transported within days, or even hours, worldwide. Human encroachment on heretofore remote areas of the world has not only disrupted the ecosystem but also resulted in exposure to zoonoses that were once rare to encounter. Many of these organisms developed the capability to "jump" over other species and begin to infect humans. Using cholera as a prototype, Shah delves into the origin and spread of numerous emerging or recurring diseases, which now number in the hundreds. Each chapter addresses a common basis of the problem of spreading diseases--with examples ranging from locomotion and filth to crowds. It is very easy to assign culpability, yet realistic approaches to solutions are lacking in otherwise fascinating accounts. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Richard Adler, University of Michigan, Dearborn

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Investigative science journalist Shah (The Fever, 2011) is at it again, and if the words, and beyond, in her latest book's subtitle don't grab a reader's attention, they should. This time, she is calling on global leaders, public and corporate, to pay attention to an impending public health emergency. As she says, between 1940 and 2004, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either newly emerged or reemerged in places and in populations that had never seen them before, any one of which can unpredictably detonate a full-fledged global pandemic of potentially biblical proportions at any time. So much for humankind's so-called postinfection era. Yes, just the reemergence of cholera a disease previously believed thoroughly eradicated in Haiti and elsewhere should be enough to alarm us to the grim possibility of evolving/mutating microbes capable of bringing worldwide human suffering and death. Shah doesn't leave us wondering how this could happen in an age of proper sewage treatment and Purel. One-by-one she ticks off (no Lyme-disease pun intended) half a dozen conduits by which deadly microbes can spread faster than you can say Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) an infection, by the way, that affected her family. Yes, Shah is back and in rare form. And this time it's personal.--Chavez, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Vibrio cholerae was once a species of marine bacteria attached to some plankton in the coastal wetlands of the Bay of Bengal. In grim detail, science journalist Shah (The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, 2010, etc.) demonstrates how it became the global source of horrendous deaths and how the story of cholera is paradigmatic of how pandemics happen. Cholera emerged in the early 1800s after the East India Company began to fill in and settle the wetlands. Disease might occur if a fisherman swallowed some brackish water, a direct transmission from the vibrio to a human. But to make the jump to human-to-human transmission, the vibrio changed. It adapted ways to form colonies, making it harder to dislodge from the human gut, and it developed a toxin that flushes all the fluids from the body, causing death by dehydration. Still, cholera might have stayed local except for other 19th-century developments: steamships and newly dug canals and waterways moved goods and people rapidly across land and sea, creating new waves of infection while also swelling the populations of cities, which lacked clean drinking water and proper waste disposal. By the 1830s, cholera was devastating Paris, London, and New York, exacerbated by the arrogance of medical elites who swore by the miasma theory of disease. Then, add political corruption after the cause was known: city contractors asked to supply clean water but substituting foul; government officials who would deny the existence of disease, so as not to discourage business. The ingredients for pandemics remain potent in a jet age with deforested lands, ever- growing cities, the consumption of bush meat and other exotic wild cuisine (from illegal "wet markets"), antibiotic resistance, inadequate disease surveillance, and destructive cultural attitudes, ranging from abject fear to blame to indifference. Shah covers all of these aspects in vivid prose and through revealing eyewitness accounts. This is not fun reading, but it's necessaryone can only hope that it drives more effective surveillance and rapid response to tomorrow's plagues. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Sonia Shah is a science journalist and prizewinning author. Her writing on science, politics, and human rights has appeared in The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , Foreign Affairs , Scientific American , and elsewhere, and she has been featured on Radiolab , Fresh Air , and TED.com, where her talk "Three Reasons We Still Haven't Gotten Rid of Malaria" has been viewed by more than a million people around the world. Her book The Fever was long-listed for the Royal Society's Winton Prize for Science Books, and Pandemic was named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice. Her next book, The Great Migration , is forthcoming in June of 2020.