Get the Summary of Donald McNeil's The Wisdom of Plagues in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "The Wisdom of Plagues" by Donald McNeil offers an in-depth exploration of the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing from McNeil's experiences as a New York Times reporter. The book begins with the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, highlighting the initial underestimation of the virus and the challenges in reporting on the...

Since Aug 2018 there have been outbreaks of African swine fever in several provinces of China. At the end of 2018, the total amount of culled animals was 650,000. China's pig herd, by far the world's largest, was estimated then at 360 million animals. The pig should be half by the end of 2019 from a year earlier as an epidemic of African swine fever (ASF) sweeps through the world's top pork producer. Up to 200 million pigs have been culled or died...

"A humorous book about history's worst plagues from the Antonine Plague, to leprosy, to polio and the heroes who fought them In 1518, in a small town in France, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced herself to her death six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had died from the mysterious dancing plague. In late-nineteenth-century England an eccentric gentleman founded...

Andiman also looks to the future, envisioning the effects on zoonoses (diseases caused by zoonotic viruses) of climate change, microenvironmental damage, population shifts, and globalization. He reveals the steps that we can, and must, take to stem the spread of animal viruses, explaining, "The zoonoses I've chosen to write about . . . are meant to describe only a small sample of what is already out there but, more menacingly, what is inevitably on...

Dissenting Voices-an Imprint of Abundant World Institute-is dedicated to helping create and foster the conditions that enable human flourishing and abundance everywhere. To these ends, we seek to inspire, inform, educate, encourage, enable, and support the application of critical thinking, imagination, and innovation to global challenges. Today, the COVID-19 pandemic is one global grand challenge that is on everyone's mind, and is likely to remain...

Excerpt: "Good Councell against the plague. Shewing sundry present preseruatiues for the same, by wholsome fumes, drinks, vomits, and other inward receits: as also, the perfect cure (by implaysture) of any that are therewith infected. Nowe necessary to be obserued of euery Housholder, to auoyde the infection, lately begun in some places of this Cittie. Written by a learned Phisition, for the health of his Countrey."

Excerpt: "Take an Onion and cut him overthwart, then make a little hole in each peece, the which you shall fill with fine Triacle, then set the pieces together again as they were before, then wrap them in a white linnen cloth. Putting it so to roast in the Embers and Ashes, then when it is roasted enough press out all the juice of it: and give the patient a spoonful thereof to drink, and ſo by Gods help he shall feel saſe and most undoubtedly be...

A leading epidemiologist shares his "powerful and necessary" (Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone) stories from the front lines of our war on infectious diseases and explains how to prepare for global epidemics -- featuring a new preface on COVID-19. Unlike natural disasters, whose destruction is concentrated in a limited area over a period of days, and illnesses, which have devastating effects but are limited to individuals and their families,...

"From the masters of storytelling-meets-science and co-authors of Quackery, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks-how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Written in the authors' lively and accessible style, chapters include page-turning medical stories about a particular disease or virus-smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV-that...

As the world's population expands, so too does the risk of communicable disease and global pandemics. Consequently, healthcare has assumed a greater centrality in the public consciousness both in the United States and around the world. With various national and international organizations dedicated to epidemiological research and disease control, societal welfare has become an increasingly significant aspect of public policy. The historical, legal,...