In Contagion and Confinement, Barron H. Lerner offers the first in-depth look at the history of tuberculosis control in the antibiotic era, providing a vital account of this neglected chapter in the history of the disease. He argues that the new antibiotic drugs, rather than being a simple panacea, actually highlighted the complex social problems that continued to predispose people to tuberculosis and interfere with its treatment.
Tracing the narratives of five incarcerated individuals, Sentenced to COVID speaks to the devastating impact of surviving the pandemic inside prison walls. Corridors of Contagion brings to light the experiences of five people incarcerated across the United States as they navigate the onset of the pandemic—and the many months, stretched into years, that followed. Journalist Victoria Law combines this storytelling with a trenchant analysis of the structural failures of the US carceral system: failures that made prisons uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19 outbreaks, from overcrowding to solitary confinement, from insufficient healthcare to life sentences. The book portrays the horrors of continual lockdowns not in the comfort of one’s own home, but in prisons where routine violence and chaos is made even more unimaginable by the complete lack of control over protection from a terrifying and lethal new virus. The pandemic provided an opportunity for lawmakers and policy makers to rethink the nation’s addiction to perpetual punishment. Instead, US jails and prisons doubled down on punishment under the guise of pandemic protections. As a result, people behind bars experienced increased stress, mental health challenges, increased violence, and higher rates of deaths, many of which could have been prevented. While the pandemic emergency has been declared over, we are continuing to learn more about the extent of its destruction. Corridors of Contagion reminds readers about both the particular horrors experienced by people in cages and the continued role of the US as the world’s prison nation.
An Observer Book of the Year A Times Science Book of the Year A New Statesman Book of the Year A Financial Times Science Book of the Year 'Astonishingly bold' Daily Mail 'It is hard to imagine a more timely book ... much of the modern world will make more sense having read it.' The Times We live in a world that's more interconnected than ever before. Our lives are shaped by outbreaks - of disease, of misinformation, even of violence - that appear, spread and fade away with bewildering speed. To understand them, we need to learn the hidden laws that govern them. From 'superspreaders' who might spark a pandemic or bring down a financial system to the social dynamics that make loneliness catch on, The Rules of Contagion offers compelling insights into human behaviour and explains how we can get better at predicting what happens next. Along the way, Adam Kucharski explores how innovations spread through friendship networks, what links computer viruses with folk stories - and why the most useful predictions aren't necessarily the ones that come true. Now revised and updated with content on Covid-19.
This book is a history of London’s vast network of fever and smallpox hospitals, built by the Metropolitan Asylums Board between 1870 and 1900. Unprecedented in size and scope, this public infrastructure inaugurated a new technology of disease prevention—isolation. Londoners suffering from infectious diseases submitted themselves to far-reaching forms of surveillance, removal, and detention, which made them legible to science and the state in entirely new ways. Isolation on a mass scale transformed the meaning of urban epidemics and introduced contentious new relationships between health, citizenship, and the spaces of modern governance. Rich in archival sources and images, this engaging book offers innovative analysis at the intersection of preventive medicine and Victorian-era liberalism.
A better and healthier time to be alive than ever -- An unhealthy country -- An unhealthy world -- Who we are, the foundational forces -- Where we live, work, and play -- Politics, power, and money -- Compassion -- Social, racial, and economic justice -- Health as a public good -- Understanding what matters most -- Working in complexity and doubt -- Humility and informing the public conversation.
The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in late 2002 and 2003 challenged the global public health community to confront a novel epidemic that spread rapidly from its origins in southern China until it had reached more than 25 other countries within a matter of months. In addition to the number of patients infected with the SARS virus, the disease had profound economic and political repercussions in many of the affected regions. Recent reports of isolated new SARS cases and a fear that the disease could reemerge and spread have put public health officials on high alert for any indications of possible new outbreaks. This report examines the response to SARS by public health systems in individual countries, the biology of the SARS coronavirus and related coronaviruses in animals, the economic and political fallout of the SARS epidemic, quarantine law and other public health measures that apply to combating infectious diseases, and the role of international organizations and scientific cooperation in halting the spread of SARS. The report provides an illuminating survey of findings from the epidemic, along with an assessment of what might be needed in order to contain any future outbreaks of SARS or other emerging infections.
For readers of Plague of Corruption, Thomas S. Cowan, MD, and Sally Fallon Morell ask the question: are there really such things as "viruses"? Or are electro smog, toxic living conditions, and 5G actually to blame for COVID-19? The official explanation for today’s COVID-19 pandemic is a “dangerous, infectious virus.” This is the rationale for isolating a large portion of the world’s population in their homes so as to curb its spread. From face masks to social distancing, from antivirals to vaccines, these measures are predicated on the assumption that tiny viruses can cause serious illness and that such illness is transmissible person-to-person. It was Louis Pasteur who convinced a skeptical medical community that contagious germs cause disease; his “germ theory” now serves as the official explanation for most illness. However, in his private diaries he states unequivocally that in his entire career he was not once able to transfer disease with a pure culture of bacteria (he obviously wasn’t able to purify viruses at that time). He admitted that the whole effort to prove contagion was a failure, leading to his famous death bed confession that “the germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.” While the incidence and death statistics for COVID-19 may not be reliable, there is no question that many people have taken sick with a strange new disease—with odd symptoms like gasping for air and “fizzing” feelings—and hundreds of thousands have died. Many suspect that the cause is not viral but a kind of pollution unique to the modern age—electromagnetic pollution. Today we are surrounded by a jangle of overlapping and jarring frequencies—from power lines to the fridge to the cell phone. It started with the telegraph and progressed to worldwide electricity, then radar, then satellites that disrupt the ionosphere, then ubiquitous Wi-Fi. The most recent addition to this disturbing racket is fifth generation wireless—5G. In The Truth About Contagion: Exploring Theories of How Disease Spreads, bestselling authors Thomas S. Cowan, MD, and Sally Fallon Morell explore the true causes of COVID-19. On September 26, 2019, 5G wireless was turned on in Wuhan, China (and officially launched November 1) with a grid of about ten thousand antennas—more antennas than exist in the whole United States, all concentrated in one city. A spike in cases occurred on February 13, the same week that Wuhan turned on its 5G network for monitoring traffic. Illness has subsequently followed 5G installation in all the major cities in America. Since the dawn of the human race, medicine men and physicians have wondered about the cause of disease, especially what we call “contagions,” numerous people ill with similar symptoms, all at the same time. Does humankind suffer these outbreaks at the hands of an angry god or evil spirit? A disturbance in the atmosphere, a miasma? Do we catch the illness from others or from some outside influence? As the restriction of our freedoms continues, more and more people are wondering whether this is true. Could a packet of RNA fragments, which cannot even be defined as a living organism, cause such havoc? Perhaps something else is involved—something that has upset the balance of nature and made us more susceptible to disease? Perhaps there is no “coronavirus” at all; perhaps, as Pasteur said, “the germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.”
In this timely, insightful, and darkly funny investigation, the acclaimed author of Against Love asks: what does living in dystopic times do to our ability to love each other and the world? COVID-19 has produced new taxonomies of love, intimacy, and vulnerability. Will its cultural afterlife be as lasting as that of HIV, which reshaped consciousness about sex and love even after AIDS itself had been beaten back by medical science? Will COVID end up making us more relationally conservative, as some think HIV did within gay culture? Will it send us fleeing into emotional silos or coupled cocoons, despite the fact that, pre-COVID, domestic coupledom had been steadily losing fans? Just as COVID revealed our nation to itself, so did it hold a mirror up to our relationships. In Love in the Time of Contagion, Laura Kipnis weaves (often hilariously) her own (ambivalent) coupled lockdown experiences together with those of others and sets them against a larger backdrop: the politics of the virus, economic disparities, changing gender relations, and the ongoing institutional crack-ups prompted by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, mapping their effects on the everyday routines and occasional solaces of love and sex.
