Read Of The Week (Sept 27th to Oct 3rd)

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Coronaviruses and Beyond

Over the past 50 years, more than 300 infectious diseases have either emerged or reemerged, appearing in places where they’ve never before been seen.

Long before the sudden arrival of Covid-19, 90 per cent of epidemiologists predicted that one of them would cause a deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations; it might be Ebola, avian flu, a drug-resistant superbug or something completely new, like the novel coronavirus that first reared its head in late 2019. While it was impossible to foresee which of these pathogens would cause the next global outbreak, scientists had been sounding the alarm for years.

In this book, Sonia Shah interweaves history, firsthand reporting and personal narrative to explore the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between cholera — one of history’s deadliest and most disruptive pathogens — and the new diseases that stalk humankind today.