Epidemiology Archives

Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic

In Uncontrolled Spread, he shows how the coronavirus and its variants were able to trounce America’s pandemic preparations, and he outlines the steps that must be taken to protect against the next outbreak. As the pandemic unfolded, Gottlieb was in regular contact with all the key players in Congress, the Trump administration, and the drug and diagnostic industries. He provides an inside account of how level after level of American government crumbled as the COVID-19 crisis advanced. […Learn More]

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, From Cholera To Ebola And Beyond

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. […Learn More]

Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Setting the annus horribilis of 2020 in historical perspective, Niall Ferguson explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters.

Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. […Learn More]