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jenmangler's review against another edition
3.0
I expected most of the book to be about the pandemic, which led to disappointment as most of the book is about the search for the virus. Not that this isn't interesting, it's just not what I was hoping for.
se_wigget's review against another edition
4.0
Excerpt from Flu: The Story of the Great [1918] Influenza Pandemic by Gina Kolata
Public health departments gave out gauze masks for people to wear in public. A New York doctor and collector of historical photographs, Dr. Stanley B. Burns, has a photograph in his archive of a minor league baseball game being played during the epidemic. It is a surreal image: The pitcher, the batter, every player, and every member of the crowd are wearing gauze masks. In Tucson, Arizona, the board of health issued a ruling that “no person shall appear in any street, park, or place where any business is transacted, or in any other public place within the city of Tucson, without wearing a mask consisting of at least four thicknesses of butter cloth or at least seven thicknesses of ordinary gauze, covering both the nose and the mouth.” In Albuquerque, New Mexico, where schools were closed and movie theaters darkened, the local newspaper noted: “the ghost of fear walked everywhere, causing many a family circle to reunite because of the different members having nothing else to do but stay home.”
lmaxwellscott's review against another edition
4.0
A fascinating story of the 1918 flu, and various scientists journeys to try to understand it and find its cause.
elliegund's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
fast-paced
4.0
Well written, but framing was sometimes sexist. Author was the science writer for the NYT who ignored AIDS.
aoosterwyk's review against another edition
5.0
What a great book! Very readable, interesting, informative and timely. I learned a lot about the influenza virus and enjoyed the glimpse into life in the world of medicine and science. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting more information than the news provides.
chelse34's review against another edition
3.0
Very interesting read. The most recent date parts of this book is 1998 with the science stuff. I'm curious if more has been found out.
Basically scientists wanted to find out why the Spanish flu of 1918 was so deadly. They estimate 100 million people died worldwide from it. When scientists were finally able to figure out the flu came from a virus and were able to map the RNA genetic strands from it, they were curious about the 1918 version.
There were some tissue samples from the army preserved in a storehouse for 80 years that they used. They also dug up eskimos in the Alaskan permafrost to collect samples of their lungs. They didn't find the live virus (they tried to grow it in the 50's for study), but they were able to use the dead virus to find the complete genetic sequence.
Different strands are titled from their different proteins that the flu virus has (hence the H1N1 for swine flu). The numbers change based in how the proteins mutate each year. Found that part fascinating!
They also talk about the immunization campaign during the Ford administration in the 70's. They thought they were going to have a huge flu pandemic again and used a bunch of federal money to vaccinate everybody. All it turned into was a fiasco of every suing the government for things that happened post vaccine. (Yes some people will have heart attacks and strokes after the vaccine if everybody gets it, because people have that happen on a daily basis. The vaccine didn't necessarily cause it.) So yeah, big litigation mess, and they canceled the campaign, and a pandemic didn't happen.
Ultimately by the end, they couldn't for sure figure out why it was so deadly. They had 3 different ideas for why it could have been.
Unless you are super interested in what I've just described with the book and want to learn more and delve deeper, you probably don't need to read this book. It's got some thick science descriptions and goes into a lot of detail telling the story of finding the virus. I just gave you all the main points if you want to skip reading it.
Basically scientists wanted to find out why the Spanish flu of 1918 was so deadly. They estimate 100 million people died worldwide from it. When scientists were finally able to figure out the flu came from a virus and were able to map the RNA genetic strands from it, they were curious about the 1918 version.
There were some tissue samples from the army preserved in a storehouse for 80 years that they used. They also dug up eskimos in the Alaskan permafrost to collect samples of their lungs. They didn't find the live virus (they tried to grow it in the 50's for study), but they were able to use the dead virus to find the complete genetic sequence.
Different strands are titled from their different proteins that the flu virus has (hence the H1N1 for swine flu). The numbers change based in how the proteins mutate each year. Found that part fascinating!
They also talk about the immunization campaign during the Ford administration in the 70's. They thought they were going to have a huge flu pandemic again and used a bunch of federal money to vaccinate everybody. All it turned into was a fiasco of every suing the government for things that happened post vaccine. (Yes some people will have heart attacks and strokes after the vaccine if everybody gets it, because people have that happen on a daily basis. The vaccine didn't necessarily cause it.) So yeah, big litigation mess, and they canceled the campaign, and a pandemic didn't happen.
Ultimately by the end, they couldn't for sure figure out why it was so deadly. They had 3 different ideas for why it could have been.
Unless you are super interested in what I've just described with the book and want to learn more and delve deeper, you probably don't need to read this book. It's got some thick science descriptions and goes into a lot of detail telling the story of finding the virus. I just gave you all the main points if you want to skip reading it.
smiles11's review against another edition
4.0
Of course it's an older book, but still very much worth reading.
ivanssister's review against another edition
3.0
Funny how something so "simple" as the flu is such a tough nut to crack. Interesting to me that this book came out in 1999 not too long after the Asian bird flu panic, and yet it's still relevant now, given the whole H1N1 panic in the past year.
bak8382's review against another edition
4.0
This book is not so much about the what the flu pandemic of 1918 was like, and more about the search for the exact virus that caused it. There's fascinating information about the science, other pandemics, and all the people involved in searching for the virus. Definitely an eye opening read while we live through a new pandemic.