I woke up pretty early today so I quietly finished reading Outbreaks and Epidemics: Battling Infection from Measles to Coronavirus by Meera Senthilingam. It’s only taken me 4 months to finish it! Don’t let this put you off. I’m a slow reader and when reading heavier educational stuff I like to read other things at the same time.
It’s only 176 pages but there’s a lot to take in, facts, figures and numbers wise but very interesting considering how the world is currently battling SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). God even just typing that sounds bloody apocalyptic!
What I really liked was learning about how the name vaccine came about and the impact of Smallpox on the future of vaccination programmes. This stuff was interesting but when too many numbers became involved, my eyes began to glaze over.
It really got me thinking, maybe COVID isn’t the last global pandemic we will see and we need to learn how we can actually avoid these outbreaks by acting quickly, listening to the scientists advice and having a plan in place. Some diseases such as Tuberculosis will get actually get worse in the future and become resistant to medicine because of our overuse of antibiotics.
There are quotes from WHO (The World Health Organization) and basically if you want to read some sciencey facts about what’s going on with everything from TB to Covid, Ebola and Malaria then this is your book. This is a really good intro to epidemiology, almost like an epidemiology for noobs.
It’s a very timely read. I will probably give it 5/5 just for the appreciation of detail and research that’s gone into it and how it included Coronavirus information despite it being written in 2020.
Have you read this book or anything similar that you would recommend? Let me know in the comments.