Dead Epidemiologists
Dead Epidemiologists

Author: Rob Wallace

Publisher: Monthly Review Press

Published: 2020-10-20

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1583679022

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A history of COVID-19 and the sociopolitical crises that led to the 2020 global pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic shocked the world. It shouldn’t have. Since this century’s turn, epidemiologists have warned of new infectious diseases. Indeed, H1N1, H7N9, SARS, MERS, Ebola Makona, Zika, and a variety of lesser viruses have emerged almost annually. But what of the epidemiologists themselves? Some bravely descended into the caves where bat species hosted coronaviruses, including the strains that evolved into the COVID-19 virus. Yet, despite their own warnings, many of the researchers appear unable to understand the true nature of the disease—as if they are dead to what they’ve seen. Dead Epidemiologists is an eclectic collection of commentaries, articles, and interviews revealing the hidden-in-plain-sight truth behind the pandemic: Global capital drove the deforestation and development that exposed us to new pathogens. Rob Wallace and his colleagues—ecologists, geographers, activists, and, yes, epidemiologists—unpack the material and conceptual origins of COVID-19. From deepest Yunnan to the boardrooms of New York City, this book offers a compelling diagnosis of the roots of COVID-19, and a stark prognosis of what—without further intervention—may come.

Big Farms Make Big Flu
Big Farms Make Big Flu

Author: Rob Wallace

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2016-06-30

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 1583675906

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The first collection to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics, and the nature of science together Thanks to breakthroughs in production and food science, agribusiness has been able to devise new ways to grow more food and get it more places more quickly. There is no shortage of news items on hundreds of thousands of hybrid poultry—each animal genetically identical to the next—packed together in megabarns, grown out in a matter of months, then slaughtered, processed and shipped to the other side of the globe. Less well known are the deadly pathogens mutating in, and emerging out of, these specialized agro-environments. In fact, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to such food systems, among them Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants. Agribusiness has known for decades that packing thousands of birds or livestock together results in a monoculture that selects for such disease. But market economics doesn't punish the companies for growing Big Flu—it punishes animals, the environment, consumers, and contract farmers. Alongside growing profits, diseases are permitted to emerge, evolve, and spread with little check. “That is,” writes evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, “it pays to produce a pathogen that could kill a billion people.” In Big Farms Make Big Flu, a collection of dispatches by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations. Wallace details, with a precise and radical wit, the latest in the science of agricultural epidemiology, while at the same time juxtaposing ghastly phenomena such as attempts at producing featherless chickens, microbial time travel, and neoliberal Ebola. Wallace also offers sensible alternatives to lethal agribusiness. Some, such as farming cooperatives, integrated pathogen management, and mixed crop-livestock systems, are already in practice off the agribusiness grid. While many books cover facets of food or outbreaks, Wallace's collection appears the first to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics and the nature of science together. Big Farms Make Big Flu integrates the political economies of disease and science to derive a new understanding of the evolution of infections. Highly capitalized agriculture may be farming pathogens as much as chickens or corn.

The Threat of Pandemic Influenza
The Threat of Pandemic Influenza

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2005-04-09

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0309095042

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Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.

Concepts of Epidemiology
Concepts of Epidemiology

Author: Raj S. Bhopal

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0198739680

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First edition published in 2002. Second edition published in 2008.

The Swine Flu Affair
The Swine Flu Affair

Author: Richard E. Neustadt

Publisher:

Published: 1978

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

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In 1976, a small group of soldiers at Fort Dix were infected with a swine flu virus that was deemed similar to the virus responsible for the great 1918-19 world-wide flu pandemic. The U.S. government initiated an unprecedented effort to immunize every American against the disease. While a qualified success in terms of numbers reached-more than 40 million Americans received the vaccine-the disease never reappeared. The program was marked by controversy, delay, administrative troubles, legal complications, unforeseen side effects and a progressive loss of credibility for public health authorities. In the waning days of the flu season, the incoming Secretary of what was then the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano, asked Richard Neustadt and Harvey Fineberg to examine what happened and to extract lessons to help cope with similar situations in the future.

The Hot Zone
The Hot Zone

Author: Richard Preston

Publisher: Corgi

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 9780552143035

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Imagine a killer with the infectiousness of the common cold and power of the Black Death. Imagine something so deadly that it wipes out 90% of those it touches. Imagine an organism against which there is no defence. But you don't need to imagine. Such a killer exists: it is a virus and its name is Ebola. The Hot Zone tells what happens when the unthinkable becomes reality: when a deadly virus, from the rain forests of Africa, crosses continents and infects a monkey house ten miles from the White House. Ebola is that reality. It has the power to decimate the world's population. Try not to panic. It will be back. There is nothing you can do...

Medicolegal Death Investigation System
Medicolegal Death Investigation System

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2003-08-22

Total Pages: 85

ISBN-13: 0309167043

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The US Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of The National Academies to conduct a workshop that would examine the interface of the medicolegal death investigation system and the criminal justice system. NIJ was particularly interested in a workshop in which speakers would highlight not only the status and needs of the medicolegal death investigation system as currently administered by medical examiners and coroners but also its potential to meet emerging issues facing contemporary society in America. Additionally, the workshop was to highlight priority areas for a potential IOM study on this topic. To achieve those goals, IOM constituted the Committee for the Workshop on the Medicolegal Death Investigation System, which developed a workshop that focused on the role of the medical examiner and coroner death investigation system and its promise for improving both the criminal justice system and the public health and health care systems, and their ability to respond to terrorist threats and events. Six panels were formed to highlight different aspects of the medicolegal death investigation system, including ways to improve it and expand it beyond its traditional response and meet growing demands and challenges. This report summarizes the Workshop presentations and discussions that followed them.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story
The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

Author: Michael Lewis

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0393881563

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New York Times Bestseller For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19. The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work. Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.