While I enjoyed how informative this was concerning the history of pandemics and vaccines, I feel like it missed the mark JUST a bit.

It’s not caught up as far as today’s vaccines and today’s vaccine history is and how it all works.

I think the book could have also referenced other things to help keep one healthy, not necessarily “immune” to viruses, in every day life.

Maybe it's just because I am in Pandemic overload but I just couldn't deal with all the information and opinions in this book.

If the year 2020 was known as the year of the pandemic, the year 2021 would be known as the year of the vaccines. For the past couple of months, most of us in society cannot avoid the topic of viruses, pandemics, vaccines, quarantines, etc. With social media so freely available, information and misinformation could spread like wildfire. Once out there, it is impossible to retract or remove it from circulation. Even medical professionals often differ in their interpretations of the best approaches to take. Since the declaration of Covid-19 as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, large parts of the world have shut down global travel and implemented widespread restrictions on people movement. There is a need for more reliable and scientifically tested information. In fact, the best way to address fears and avoid pandemonium behaviour is to share reliable and trustworthy information as quickly as possible. This book is a contribution toward this cause. The authors are not only medical professionals but also on the teaching faculty of renowned schools like the MIT and the University of California, San Francisco. They begin this book by reminding us that pandemics are nothing new. There were serious influenza-related breakouts back in 1918 (Spanish Flu), 1957 (Asian Flu), 1968 (HK Flu), and 2009 (H5N1). The history lessons include the two eras: Pre-Vaccine and Vaccine eras. Before the discovery of vaccines as a defense tool against viruses, people resorted to all kinds of non-scientific speculations about the causes of the diseases. Even the name "influenza" was derived from the popular idea that illnesses were caused by the Italian word for "influence of the stars." Gradually, the thinking shifts from helpless acceptance toward observations of why people recovering from illness were not infected by smallpox. This led to theories such as the "expulsion theory" and "acquired immunity." With the discovery of cowpox as protection against smallpox, the stage was set for more research on "vaccinia," the Latin name for cowpox. Thanks to the work of Edward Jenner (1749-1823), the threat of smallpox was addressed in a large scale. We learn also from history that vaccinations were controversial then, not just today. Readers will slowly join the dots of healthcare and medical advancement to give credit to van Leeuwenhook's microscope, Robert Koch's postulates, Louis Pasteur's research on the anthrax vaccine, and how our present work derives much from Pasteur. The modern challenges include the search for a solution against coronaviruses and contagious diseases. Readers learn about the way viruses work; the way human cells replicate; the differentiation of the body cell into DNA, RNA, and Proteins; and how cells reproduce. They then describe the manner viruses enter our cells to make us sick. Knowing the genome and viral DNA/RNA aids in finding ways to battle them. They explain the reasons for the pandemic in a post-agrarian culture.

The authors then helped readers to understand our immune systems, and what we can do to strengthen them. Gradually, they describe the spread and mitigation of pandemics, various therapies available, and how vaccines work. They adopt a familiar framework that begins with the history, the present situations, and the future shape of the subject concerned.

My Thoughts
==============
Firstly, it is a relevant topic, especially during this pandemic. There are many worried people out there. From the fear of contracting Covid-19 to the fear of vaccine side effects, people are vulnerable to both facts and fallacies. Fear often pushes one to adopt the latter. The golden rule in care is essentially about improving our comprehension of the facts surrounding a very important topic for this age. The same applies to healthcare. The more we understand, the lesser the chance of any misdiagnosis or misinterpretation. Understanding the facts of the matter helps prevent gullible acceptance of unproven theories and misinformation. In our age of Google and social media, it is increasingly more difficult to distinguish the fact from falsehood. Every person potentially becomes an expert commentator on the basis of a few sensational articles or convincing videos on their Internet devices. Without adequate knowledge and specialized training, novices might commit the danger of shallow smart-alecks who spout out superficial answers without understanding the root causes or associated consequences. This is where books like this come in. It educates the public or interested reader with the basic facts and reasons behind the professional work done in medical sciences and healthcare.

Secondly, it is hoped that readers will give our healthcare professionals applause and encouragement. Reading this book should not puff anyone up but to help us develop a greater appreciation for the professionals dealing with the difficult tasks of DNA research, virus studies, antiviral therapies, vaccine production, etc. Much of the material could be overly technical for those of us without a basic understanding of science and technical jargon. Thankfully, the illustrations help us to better visualize the concepts. I appreciate the way the authors honour the past achievements that helped us get to where we are today. Every subject, from the discovery of viruses to the development of vaccines, the history of the pandemics and the lessons learned, we owe our current progress to the hard work of our predecessors. Gratitude is a powerful way to encourage all researchers, that their work is not in vain. This is not limited to those whose ideas succeed, we should also be thankful to those who showed us which paths we ought NOT to take.

Finally, we should never take drop our guard in our fight against infectious diseases. Pandemics are nothing new, and we ought to be wiser after experiencing the 1918 Spanish Flu or the 2003 SARS outbreak. Basic hygiene and care must be adopted globally. We can all do our part in fighting the pandemic together. As long we are all on the same page, we will be better able and equipped to build our defenses and cultivate herd immunity protection for all. This begins with relevant facts and appropriate sharing of information to all. Don't just rely on Google searches or social media for our sources. Go for reliable and reputable sources like this book.

Arup K. Chakraborty is Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Physics and Chemistry at MIT, where he also served as the Founding Director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. He is a founding member of the Ragon Institute.

Andrey S. Shaw, an immunologist, is Staff Scientist in Immunology and Oncology at Genentech and holds adjunct professorships at Washington University in St. Louis and at the University of California, San Francisco. Illustrator Philip J. S. Stork is a Professor at the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health and Science University.

Rating: 4.5 stars of 5.

conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of MIT Press and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

This book is very relevant to the current situation and pandemic. The book covers everything within the title - viruses, pandemics and immunity. It also examines what a vírus is, how a pandemic comes into being, and how immunity either comes into being automatically or how this can be created, by scientists. I did feel as though it was a little bit rushed - to try and fit into the current situation and hit the market for the current situation. Overall, it did the job it said it would, it maybe just needs a bit of editing and marketing better.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Coming from someone who has some graduate experience with virology as well as is currently pursuing medicine, I think this was an excellent book for breaking down a lot of buzzwords, history, and jargon surrounding the coronavirus pandemic for the general public.

This had the necessary information without being overly explanatory or overly complicated. It was a good level of approachable while explaining the history of viral diseases, vaccines, as well as connecting modern times to historical pandemics. The breakdown of issues was accessible and approachable.

My one comment would be about whether it would be possible to make some updates to cover the new realities of the pandemic with vaccine distributions, mutations, variants, etc? I know it is impossible to fully keep up but this could be very important for people without backgrounds to understand the current situation now

This book delivers exactly what it promises in a forward: condensed, reliable information on an urgent issue. In a clear yet engaging way, the authors, both acknowledged scientists, are describing the history of studying and treating infectious diseases, adding all the basic facts about the biology of viruses and the immune system. Highly recommended as an easy-to-digest beginner's guide to the topic, so necessary in this time of the global pandemic.

Thanks to the publisher, MIT Press, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.

So many pandemic books are being rushed into print. This book has lots on info, but not exactly what I was looking for. I think the most comprehensive books of this pandemic will need to wait until it's over. I have a gut feeling, though, that much like the Spanish Flu, it will be forgotten about pretty quickly as it gets behind us. Still, if one needs info this book is pretty good.

Must reading for the historical and scientific context

I loved this book. It was a pleasure to read, notwithstanding the grim nature of the subject matter. All the explanations of the science are clear and there is lots of history. The illustrations are excellent. Although the book isn’t long, it covers all the major relevant areas. This book is a must-read in these times as it is great at placing the current COVID-19 pandemic into the larger historical and scientific context. Even if these were not COVID times, the book provides such a great overview that it is a must-read at any time.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary advance reader copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

This book covers everything within the title: it examines what a vírus is, how a pandemic comes into being, and how immunity either comes into being automatically, or how this can be created, by scientists.

It is not clear who this book is intended for, and the details on what a virus is, and how they hijack the human cells to create either sickness or death may be a little hard to follow, or somewhat dry, for those who are not medically minded. The diagrams were also, all hand-drawn and handwritten, where possibly computerised designs might have been better deployed. Viruses can scarcely be said to be alive, as they are just free-floating specks of code totally depend on an external host to replicate themselves. Microbiology is true nano-biology.

The history of pandemics and how they spread and come about is possibly more I tetesting to the lay person. This history begins as microscopic lenses brought about the revelation of what is was recisely about miasma and humours that did allow both bacteria and viruses to spread and cause the disaster that is any kind of plague to wreak its havoc on human societies (there is also the reminder that had humans not first settled in close city communities on proximity to animals, there would never have been any kind of plague. Plagues are possibly an inevitable consequence of human progress, with the inferred warning that eco systems also need respect, if germs are not to jump species).

With smallpox it was first the question of immunising by using a 'weakened' form of the germ, before the discovery that the much less lethal cowpox could immunise much more safely. Hence the term 'vaccination,' from the latin word for 'cow.'

The history of the rivalry between Pasteur and Koch in the fight against disease makes an amusing aside in the telling here.

The tragedies of losing children to smallpox, diphtheria, TB, tetanus, polio and measles are now forgotten - clearly now, forgotten all-to well. Perhaps thecwriters of this book did not want to infer that, but there is certainly the inferences that Science has already done so much to keep these a scourges at bay, and this will surely what will happen in good time with Covid, as advances in combating the disease are described (that this has also led to overpopulation is not necessarily forgotten here, however).

Finally, the demographics of control of the spread of a virus are looked at.

This is all well worth reading, and there is the underlying optimistic message that science and ingenuity in finding new cures will certainly win in the end (and hopefully over ignorance too), though pandemic awareness does need to be maintained always. I gave this book a 4 because the graphics looked a little amateurish to my eye, but otherwise this is a very sound and eye-opening read.

A short and very dense informational book on the current corona pandemic written by professionals in the field for the rest of us. It simplifies the current state of science for the most part, that the average reader can easily comprehend and follow. I got lost only once, during the part where the authors did some applied mathematics with pandemic forecasting in the chapter explaining the spread of the virus and R0. Not quite 5 stars because of that and the fact that you can actually detect the fact that different individuals actually wrote the book. Still, a good primer for intelligent conversations on Covid-19 around the water cooler.

I had high hopes for this book but it wasn't ultimately very helpful for me. I was hoping for an informational book more about how to survive pandemics, while this is more the history of pandemics and vaccines. While it was rushed to publication and talks about covid throughout, it wasn't very helpful or up-to-date about it other than projected vaccine technology.

My family was exposed to Covid very early in the pandemic and my then 16 year-old son and I became very ill. He got over the illness itself relatively quickly but then developed a sort of CFS afterwards that weakened him for months. I became very sick and it was still in the times when they would not test you unless you were hospitalized and told you not to see your doctor or go to the hospital unless you were literally about to die. As a result, I ended up needing to sort or crowd-fund my own survival, which I was able to do by following an online group of people around the world who posted the most helpful studies and articles, reading loads of books about viruses and immunity, relying on all of the advice from my most trusted herbal experts, etc. It was a time when you couldn't even order a thermometer or most medicines (herbal or OTC) online without weeks of waiting and the stores in every town near us where empty of things I would ordinarily rely on. I got sick in early March and was still very ill in August (the past two months I have been eating a ketogenic diet to manage some of the aftereffects of my illness and that's had an incredible effect on finally healing completely). Most of the effects during the summer were from the after-effects of the virus -- I developed incredibly high blood pressure where it had been very low, had blood in my urine and constant pain from kidney damage, had to relearn how to breathe enough, had nerve damage throughout my limbs (and still numbness in two toes), had blood vessels that burst in my legs for months including one that left a dark blue patch the size of a baseball that faded to a permanent pink scar on my calf, twice stopped breathing completely when I was starting to fall asleep, had extreme pain in my legs, had heart palpitations and terrible chest pain... So I am very interested in anything related to covid or viruses.

Unfortunately, this book is mostly about the history of viral pandemics and vaccines. The information about covid is very sparse and it was written early in the summer, so it's not really even very accurate. I've read news articles that give a much more thorough explanation of how covid works in the body. The latter half of the book is all about vaccine history and how the new vaccines for covid will likely to be made with new technology like RNA vaccines. They cover a little bit about how we ultimately killed and sickened people sometimes with bad vaccine technology, but these are given a sentence or half of one at best and then move on to how they will save us, especially since these ones use brand new technology that's never been used before so it will be much safer(?). The last pages tell of their 6 steps that they say we need to prepare for all the pandemics to come, which include things like monitoring everybody (acknowledging that it will be difficult to protect personal freedoms), investing massive amounts of money in tests, vaccines and technology (they propose that we could save the economy by the government and businesses spending billions and employing people here), and philanthropic donations of massive sums by organizations and the rich. We'll see how well anybody really follows that.

This is a fine book if you don't really know anything about vaccine history and the inner workings of viruses and you just want to learn their history, but it is completely devoid of anything about how to best support your body in the time of a pandemic if you don't have a vaccine. I firmly believe that the many things I did every day to pull myself back to health saved me (even my doctor, when I finally got to see her months later, told me "Keep doing exactly what you've been doing"). Whenever I stopped the regimen, I quickly got sicker again, and it was all things that I could find in my home and environment (granted, I am a forager and herbalist so I probably have a bigger stash than most of things like elderberries and had a husband who was able to easily find me things like stinging nettles, but many things like fresh garlic and ginger are pretty easy for anyone to find), and things I could do myself like breathing exercises, drinking tons of water, getting enough sleep every night no matter what, meditation (yes, it really helps, especially things like blood pressure), sleeping prone when my lungs were struggling, etc.

Ultimately, this book was a two for me -- just okay.

Side note: One of the resources that was the most helpful to me when it was finally released was an entire book-length document that respected author and herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner (author of Herbal Antibiotics: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-Resistant Bacteria and Herbal Antivirals: Natural Remedies for Emerging & Resistant Viral Infections) released on his website. It is over 100 pages, references the very latest scientific research on covid, and he released it free for the public. https://www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/w... He specifically talks about how this virus works and how it is different from most viruses, and gives advice for managing every one of the dozens of symptoms that it can manifest.

I received a digital ARC of this book for review.

This book was apparently rushed into print in response to the COVID 19 pandemic and it show. It is worth reading but I am certain that many much better books will soon be released.