A review by ashleysbooknook
Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It by Gina Kolata

4.0

Fascinating! It got a little slow toward the end, but then all came together. This is not just about the 1918 flu epidemic. We are taken on a journey from then to now, stopping along the way to talk about other epidemics that I didn’t know about, but which helped scientists learn more about what may have happened in 1918. It was interesting to see how the government, doctors, and scientists reacted to new findings or threats of new outbreaks. We also got a look into how scientists are able to predict, with a certain level of accuracy, what types of illnesses we will see and how dangerous/rampant they will be. The author also touched on the dilemma (a few decades ago) of whether to push a vaccine out to the general public or keep it until they had more information about the disease they were seeing. Doctors and scientists had been working on it and then they started seeing cases. It wasn’t enough to justify a panic, but they also did not want to sit on a bunch of vaccines and risk it being too late to save lives if they waited too long. I am not doing justice at all the this struggle or the details in the book. It’s late. I’m tired. But I’m trying to make the point that I learned a lot which helped me see why things are being done the way they are right now, with the novel corona virus. This context explains all the “gotcha” questions nay sayers and conspiracy theorists bring up to try to prove this is planned or a political tool or whatever craziness they came up with today.