📖 COVID-19. The Pandemic that Never Should Have Happened, and How to Stop the Next One

The world is currently seized by the worst pandemic since the devastating flu of 1918. It seems extremely likely to continue for at least the next few months and that, unlike seasonal influenza, it won't stop for summer in the northern hemisphere. The most probable scenario is that it will eventually stop when we've all encountered it and, as epidemiologists tactfully put it, died or survived - or been vaccinated, if science moves quickly enough. By then, one prominent researcher calculates, the first wave of this pandemic might claim the lives of up to 50 million people. Fighting this pandemic and preventing the next one will take political action of all kinds, globally, from both people and governments. But one good thing this pandemic might do is finally galvanise the world to get to grips with viruses. The more people understand what we need to do, the more likely that will be. In a compelling narrative that tells the full story behind the headlines, Debora MacKenzie reveals the biological, political, economic and cultural reasons why diseases spread, why some are global threats (and some aren't), and how we stop them - or fail to.