In the last fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have emerged or re-emerged in places where they have never been seen. Long before COVID-19 hit, almost all epidemiologists agreed that one of them would cause a deadly pandemic for generations to come: Ebola, bird flu, or something entirely new. While it was impossible to predict the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 and we also cannot know what pathogen will cause the next global outbreak, by unraveling the histories of past pandemics we can begin to better understand our future and prepare for what has in store for us.
Pandemic is a seminal work of epidemiological history that explores the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between cholera—one of the deadliest and most disruptive pandemic-causing pathogens in history—and other new diseases that haunt us. Tracing every stage of cholera's dramatic journey, from its ...read more