Waubonsee Community College

Pandemic, tracking contagions, from cholera to ebola and beyond, Sonia Shah

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

platesillustrations

index present

non fiction

Pandemic

907585936

Sonia Shah

tracking contagions, from cholera to ebola and beyond

"From the author of The Fever, a wide-ranging inquiry into the origins of pandemics Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera-one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens-and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today, from Ebola and avian influenza to drug-resistant superbugs. More than three hundred infectious diseases have emerged or reemerged in new territory during the past fifty years, and 90 percent of epidemiologists expect that one of them will cause a disruptive, deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. To reveal how that might happen, Sonia Shah tracks each stage of cholera's dramatic journey from harmless microbe to world-changing pandemic, from its 1817 emergence in the South Asian hinterlands to its rapid dispersal across the nineteenth-century world and its latest beachhead in Haiti. She reports on the pathogens following in cholera's footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers emerging from China's wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, the slums of Port-au-Prince, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast. By delving into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world's deadliest diseases, Pandemic reveals what the next epidemic might look like-and what we can do to prevent it"--, Provided by publisher"Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera--one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens--and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today"--, Provided by publisher

Cholera's child : the microbes' comeback -- The jump : crossing the species barrier at wet markets, pig farms, and South Asian wetlands -- Locomotion : the global dissemination of pathogens through canals, steamships, and jet airplanes -- Filth : the rising tide of feculence, from nineteenth-century New York City to the slums of Port-au-Prince and the factory farms of south China -- Crowds : the amplification of epidemics in the global metropolis -- Corruption : private interests versus public health, or, How Aaron Burr and the Manhattan Company poisoned New York City with cholera -- Blame : cholera riots, AIDS denialism, and vaccine resistance -- The cure : the suppression of John Snow and the limits of biomedicine -- The revenge of the sea : the cholera paradigm -- The logic of pandemics : the lost history of ancient pandemics -- Tracking the next contagion : reimagining our place in a microbial world