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A review by evan_streeby
Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston
5.0
Boy can Preston write a non-fiction thriller/horror. He managed to toe the line between storytelling and scientific exposition that made this one of the most engaging non-fiction books I’ve read. Preston did an excellent job of showing the dignity of the sierra-leonian population and all those who gave their lives fighting this monster virus
Disclaimer for tirade not explicitly related to the book, with brief statistics pulled from pubmed and elsewhere:
Ebola is terrifying, but in this text, and with COVID, we learn that the white-centric conceit of “the poor uneducated Africans just don’t know how to handle a virus” is not only wildly racist and untrue, but completely backwards. African nations were able to stamp out ebola (r0 of 1.51-2.53*, meaning that each person who contracts the disease infects about 2 more people) within a couple months, limiting the disease to 50,000 cases or so by the end of the pandemic.
The US primarily, along with Western European countries (pop. ~800,000,000”), the “bastions of reason and science” failed to do so with Covid (r0 a comparable 1.4-2.4**). Instead they let conspiracy, disinformation, arrogance, and superstition lead to over 300 million cases cumulative death toll of 3.7 million (case fatality rate ~1.2) in Europe and the US since Feb. 2020^ and a whopping 1.6 million in the US alone (more on this below).
Meanwhile, Africa (pop. ~1,250,000,000) had a COVID death toll of a mere 258,000 out of 12 million cases (case fatality rate ~2.15)^^
There are many factors that play a role in COVID’s transmission, but it’s extremely unlikely anything other than better pandemic management and a society more responsive to biological crisis can account for a continent with more than 1.5x the population having 25x (!) fewer cases than the “progressive” “enlightened” other.
As an aside, it’s worth diving a bit deeper into the US here, as we were the worst offenders in the world. The US contains about 4% of the world’s population but a whopping 16.7% of the total COVID deaths. With these numbers we can do some quick math
US expected proportion of deaths (considering all humans had an equal risk of infection/death) = 4%
Actual proportion of deaths = 16.67%
Deviation = Actual - Expected = 0.1667 - 0.04 = 0.1267
Percentage deviation relative to the expected proportion = (Deviation / Expected) × 100 = (0.1267 / 0.04) × 100 ≈ 316.75%. A terrifying number that shows how ill prepared the US is for any pandemic, keeping in mind that COVID only had a biosafety level of 3, when Ebola and others like it are level 4.
*-Khan, A., Naveed, M., Dur-e-Ahmad, M. et al. Estimating the basic reproductive ratio for the Ebola outbreak in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Infect Dis Poverty 4, 13 (2015).
**- Achaiah NC, Subbarajasetty SB, Shetty RM. R0 and Re of COVID-19: Can We Predict When the Pandemic Outbreak will be Contained? Indian J Crit Care Med 2020;24(11):1125–1127
^-https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102288/coronavirus-deaths-development-europe/
^^- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1170463/coronavirus-cases-in-africa/
Disclaimer for tirade not explicitly related to the book, with brief statistics pulled from pubmed and elsewhere:
Ebola is terrifying, but in this text, and with COVID, we learn that the white-centric conceit of “the poor uneducated Africans just don’t know how to handle a virus” is not only wildly racist and untrue, but completely backwards. African nations were able to stamp out ebola (r0 of 1.51-2.53*, meaning that each person who contracts the disease infects about 2 more people) within a couple months, limiting the disease to 50,000 cases or so by the end of the pandemic.
The US primarily, along with Western European countries (pop. ~800,000,000”), the “bastions of reason and science” failed to do so with Covid (r0 a comparable 1.4-2.4**). Instead they let conspiracy, disinformation, arrogance, and superstition lead to over 300 million cases cumulative death toll of 3.7 million (case fatality rate ~1.2) in Europe and the US since Feb. 2020^ and a whopping 1.6 million in the US alone (more on this below).
Meanwhile, Africa (pop. ~1,250,000,000) had a COVID death toll of a mere 258,000 out of 12 million cases (case fatality rate ~2.15)^^
There are many factors that play a role in COVID’s transmission, but it’s extremely unlikely anything other than better pandemic management and a society more responsive to biological crisis can account for a continent with more than 1.5x the population having 25x (!) fewer cases than the “progressive” “enlightened” other.
As an aside, it’s worth diving a bit deeper into the US here, as we were the worst offenders in the world. The US contains about 4% of the world’s population but a whopping 16.7% of the total COVID deaths. With these numbers we can do some quick math
US expected proportion of deaths (considering all humans had an equal risk of infection/death) = 4%
Actual proportion of deaths = 16.67%
Deviation = Actual - Expected = 0.1667 - 0.04 = 0.1267
Percentage deviation relative to the expected proportion = (Deviation / Expected) × 100 = (0.1267 / 0.04) × 100 ≈ 316.75%. A terrifying number that shows how ill prepared the US is for any pandemic, keeping in mind that COVID only had a biosafety level of 3, when Ebola and others like it are level 4.
*-Khan, A., Naveed, M., Dur-e-Ahmad, M. et al. Estimating the basic reproductive ratio for the Ebola outbreak in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Infect Dis Poverty 4, 13 (2015).
**- Achaiah NC, Subbarajasetty SB, Shetty RM. R0 and Re of COVID-19: Can We Predict When the Pandemic Outbreak will be Contained? Indian J Crit Care Med 2020;24(11):1125–1127
^-https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102288/coronavirus-deaths-development-europe/
^^- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1170463/coronavirus-cases-in-africa/