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nwhikerThe Viral Storm by Nathan Wolfe.
Us, viruses -vrii?- and how we met and interacted over the years. Who kills who. Who might kill who. And who do we figure out who will kill next.
The good...
It's a short, interesting read. It does get repetitive (see below) but covers quite a bit of ground. The subject matter is interesting as well, and the author clearly knows what he is talking about and what he wants to impart. He does that well, without sounding alarmist and OMG! The end of the world!
He also outlines some concrete steps that can be taken. I disagree with him (see below) that google is going to be our salvation, but he does have some ideas of what needs to be done to allow us to head off the next pandemic.
The neutral...
The science. The good point is also the bad point, so I shoved it in neutral.
If someone had very little biology background -and by that I mean even less than the general culture gives us- this book would still be understandable. The science is merely hinted at, and never complex. This, in turn, creates a problem in that it both leaves and impression of superficiality, but also some things just don't make sense, or are so simplified that you almost want to say "why did you bother including that at all?" I think most people could have handled more than was given, and that would have allowed for a more interesting read.
The bad...
Look, I'm sure Dr Wolfe is brilliant. That's pretty clear. We really don't need it repeated about a zillion times. I did this! I got this award! I'm so awesome they gave me money for this! I founded this! I created this! These researchers are The! Best! and they took me under their wings! Looke me! Looke me! At first it was fine, but after a while, it got old, kinda like reading the long winded cv of someone applying for a Nobel Prize. (Which, yeah, I know, but that'll give the idea...)
A lot of repitition. It's almost as if he didn't have any sexy pandemics that killed loads of people to discuss so he went over a few points more than once. I think we heard of the hunter/butcher/blood contact/virus jump thing at least four or five times.
A few things never felt like they were taken to their logical conclusion. He went on at length about the early 20th century origins of HIV/AIDS as a mosaic virus, and it's not-very-well-documented early spread, but I feel he really just abandoned it there. I mean, I get that it was infecting people in Africa for a long time, but it didn't become a real pandemic until much later, and I feel that wasn't documented.
The guy is clearly a primatologist, and very focused on the diseases that jumped from monkeys/apes to men. End result is that I feel he rather missed the boat on flu (birds and swine) and he never mentioned, for example, Hanta virus, or even, to be best of my recollection the freaking plague. Yes, I know he was virus intensive, but still the Black Death merited some attention as an epidemic that came from the animal world and spread to us. Or at least a mention.
Did google pay him? I'm guessing he got some venture capital from google, because the last part of the book was a paean to goodle and OMG, google, and google is going to save the world! Over and freaking over. He also attributed to google things that were not done by google, and that's a bit irksome. There is also a strong implication that this all should be left to the private sector, and I disagree with that for more than one reason.
See the comment about google above? Well, he had zero issues with google talking search data and using it to determine flu penetration maps. That's fine but... well, I'd have at least expected a little sop about privacy, ya know? It's ok when it's the flu, and while I know that searches aren't private blah blah blah, I think the privacy angle should have been explored. Repeat this comment with Facebook and twitter. Basically, his idea is that searches and social media are going to be doing disease monitoring (real time! faster and better than CDC!), which might be great, but the privacy angle needed to be addressed, because when it's not flu but syphilis, that could be more of an issue.
Overall..
I had the book on CD and in book format, something I've learned to do since the CD quality has been piss poor recently (I'm guessing they're going more and more to digital, which sucks since I no longer have access to my library digital and ebook because of privacy concerns). Anyhow, I'm not sure I'd have been able to read the whole book. It was fine on CD, but the redundancy and the slightly self-important style are harder to take on paper. FWIW.
It's a reasonably quick read on an interesting topic. I'm not sure I'd strongly recommend it but if you've read nothing else on the subject, it's certainly an ok book to get the breadth of possibilities of what a global pandemic could mean.
Us, viruses -vrii?- and how we met and interacted over the years. Who kills who. Who might kill who. And who do we figure out who will kill next.
The good...
It's a short, interesting read. It does get repetitive (see below) but covers quite a bit of ground. The subject matter is interesting as well, and the author clearly knows what he is talking about and what he wants to impart. He does that well, without sounding alarmist and OMG! The end of the world!
He also outlines some concrete steps that can be taken. I disagree with him (see below) that google is going to be our salvation, but he does have some ideas of what needs to be done to allow us to head off the next pandemic.
The neutral...
The science. The good point is also the bad point, so I shoved it in neutral.
If someone had very little biology background -and by that I mean even less than the general culture gives us- this book would still be understandable. The science is merely hinted at, and never complex. This, in turn, creates a problem in that it both leaves and impression of superficiality, but also some things just don't make sense, or are so simplified that you almost want to say "why did you bother including that at all?" I think most people could have handled more than was given, and that would have allowed for a more interesting read.
The bad...
Look, I'm sure Dr Wolfe is brilliant. That's pretty clear. We really don't need it repeated about a zillion times. I did this! I got this award! I'm so awesome they gave me money for this! I founded this! I created this! These researchers are The! Best! and they took me under their wings! Looke me! Looke me! At first it was fine, but after a while, it got old, kinda like reading the long winded cv of someone applying for a Nobel Prize. (Which, yeah, I know, but that'll give the idea...)
A lot of repitition. It's almost as if he didn't have any sexy pandemics that killed loads of people to discuss so he went over a few points more than once. I think we heard of the hunter/butcher/blood contact/virus jump thing at least four or five times.
A few things never felt like they were taken to their logical conclusion. He went on at length about the early 20th century origins of HIV/AIDS as a mosaic virus, and it's not-very-well-documented early spread, but I feel he really just abandoned it there. I mean, I get that it was infecting people in Africa for a long time, but it didn't become a real pandemic until much later, and I feel that wasn't documented.
The guy is clearly a primatologist, and very focused on the diseases that jumped from monkeys/apes to men. End result is that I feel he rather missed the boat on flu (birds and swine) and he never mentioned, for example, Hanta virus, or even, to be best of my recollection the freaking plague. Yes, I know he was virus intensive, but still the Black Death merited some attention as an epidemic that came from the animal world and spread to us. Or at least a mention.
Did google pay him? I'm guessing he got some venture capital from google, because the last part of the book was a paean to goodle and OMG, google, and google is going to save the world! Over and freaking over. He also attributed to google things that were not done by google, and that's a bit irksome. There is also a strong implication that this all should be left to the private sector, and I disagree with that for more than one reason.
See the comment about google above? Well, he had zero issues with google talking search data and using it to determine flu penetration maps. That's fine but... well, I'd have at least expected a little sop about privacy, ya know? It's ok when it's the flu, and while I know that searches aren't private blah blah blah, I think the privacy angle should have been explored. Repeat this comment with Facebook and twitter. Basically, his idea is that searches and social media are going to be doing disease monitoring (real time! faster and better than CDC!), which might be great, but the privacy angle needed to be addressed, because when it's not flu but syphilis, that could be more of an issue.
Overall..
I had the book on CD and in book format, something I've learned to do since the CD quality has been piss poor recently (I'm guessing they're going more and more to digital, which sucks since I no longer have access to my library digital and ebook because of privacy concerns). Anyhow, I'm not sure I'd have been able to read the whole book. It was fine on CD, but the redundancy and the slightly self-important style are harder to take on paper. FWIW.
It's a reasonably quick read on an interesting topic. I'm not sure I'd strongly recommend it but if you've read nothing else on the subject, it's certainly an ok book to get the breadth of possibilities of what a global pandemic could mean.
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