The Next Pandemic
On the Front Lines Against Humankind's Gravest Dangers
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4.6 • 15 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
An inside account of the fight to contain the world's deadliest diseases -- and the panic and corruption that make them worse.
Throughout history, humankind's biggest killers have been infectious diseases: the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, and AIDS alone account for over one hundred million deaths. We ignore this reality most of the time, but when a new threat -- Ebola, SARS, Zika, coronavirus -- seems imminent, we send our best and bravest doctors to contain it. People like Dr. Ali S. Khan.
In his long career as a public health first responder -- protected by a thin mask from infected patients, napping under nets to keep out scorpions, making life-and-death decisions on limited, suspect information -- Khan has found that rogue microbes will always be a problem, but outbreaks are often caused by people. We make mistakes, politicize emergencies, and, too often, fail to imagine the consequences of our actions.
The Next Pandemic is a firsthand account of disasters like anthrax, bird flu, and others -- and how we could do more to prevent their return. It is both a gripping story of our brushes with fate and an urgent lesson on how we can keep ourselves safe from the inevitable next pandemic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As they address startling implications for future public health, Khan, former director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the aid of writer Patrick, skillfully chronicles the engrossing investigative work spawned by recent pathenogenic outbreaks, including those of ebola, swine flu, and anthrax. Along the way, Khan covers the dizzying technical complexity of the transmission and sources of rodent-borne hantavirus; the search for "patient zero" of an ebola outbreak in Zaire in 1995; the containment of the viral disease monkeypox in Kinshasa two years later; the perplexing anthrax outbreak in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the hunt for its perpetrator; and efforts to deal with the West Nile virus in New York City. Unraveling the meticulous process of finding a disease's source, cause, and prevention, Khan alludes to the "powerful mix" of health data, politics, and "anti-science myths" that leave the nation vulnerable. This well-written public health journey is remarkable in no small part because of the signposts Khan finds along the way that the public must heed: "The absence of deeper understanding and consistent attention" to emerging infections and possible pandemics, he writes, "leaves us, as they say along the fault lines in California, just waiting for the big one."
