Reddit reviews The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

I have always been a bit grimly obsessed by Ebola, and my friend gave me this to read a few years ago. It was terrifying and riveting. Plus, not long after, said friend went on Honeymoon very near to supposed Ebola cave... he wasn't keen.

Incidentally, a good follow-up read to this is The Coming Plague

This is a good, long book about the origins and discovery of some of the newer, more confusing diseases. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance
The title is more clickbait-y than the actual work.

Methinks it's a bit too late for all that.

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-Balance/dp/0140250913

Captain Trips is coming.

I always point people to this book when they blow off vaccinations or contagious diseases:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases/dp/0140250913

The other book? Preston's The Hot Zone.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Hot-Zone-Terrifying-Story/dp/0385479565

Both of those scared the ever living shit out of me, and they're also why I hate Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy.

I'm going to fall back on a couple of non-fiction books that are mind-blowing, although not necessarily on the same scale you're talking about.

On germs, plagues and bio-containment:

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston:

http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385495226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266864059&sr=8-1

The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett:

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-Balance/dp/0140250913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266864094&sr=1-1

I read both of these books back to back and it's like reading the same story first covered by the National Enquirer (Hot Zone) and then again by the New York Times (Coming Plague). It's a fascinating look at disease distribution and protection. The Hot Zone is a light easy read that's more sensationalist than scientific, the Coming Plague is the polar opposite, but both are good reads.

Road Fever by Tim Cahill:

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Fever-Tim-Cahill/dp/0394758374/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266864207&sr=1-1

Guy is hired by GM for a promotional stunt. Drive their new truck from the tip of Argentina to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska as fast as he can. The problems he has getting through South and Central America are amazing, and not just culturally, politically.

Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O'Hanlon:

http://www.amazon.com/Into-Heart-Borneo-Redmond-OHanlon/dp/0394755405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266864285&sr=1-1

Take your average academic natural history book reviewer and throw him in the jungle for a month! It will be great!

Or The Hot Zone. But if you want really scary bone chilling, read The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. This is about all of the potential diseases out there "waiting" to spread through humanity. I wanted to wrap myself in plastic and never touch a thing again. Did you know that there are bacteria that can live in bleach bottles?

So just a little more detail on this, especially in regards to Ebola virus and how the US dealt with it. Also, to preface, I'm about to begin my PhD and will be working in high containment - as I am completely fascinated by these pathogens, especially filoviruses, and had the pleasure of meeting one of the head physicians who tended to the Ebola cases at Emory University.

So despite the fact that Ebola will likely never reach epidemic proportions in the US as it did in Africa due to cultural differences that ultimately led to quick dissemination through the region - the US swiftly put precautionary measures into place. The most notable is how quickly they turned a wing of the hospital at Emory into a BSL4 containment facility. Utilizing the NEIDL at Boston University as an upsetting example of how many set backs there are to establishing BSL4 facilities - I believe there's less than 20 in the US (the exact number escapes me at this hour), yet another illustration of the difficulties of establishing high containment facilities. Yet When emory began getting over crowded and needed more BSL4 space - they were able to (with the help of their CDC neighbors) create a fully functional BSL4 in 48hrs. In addition to the Emory isolation unit, after the 'Ebola scare' the government and/or state health departments issued high containment bio safety suits to the major hospitals in each state (even if they didn't have quarantine units), in case they ever had to deal with an outbreak. (Source: a few friends of mine are head of their departments in major cities and informed me because they knew I would get a kick out of it. lol)

I could go on and on (because I am a super big nerd about infectious pathogens), but I will give you some cool resources for you to check out if you'd like to read about it more.

Emory Ebola isolation unit

My absolute favorite book, which explains how a lot of the worlds most deadly pathogens first emerged and how they were discovered - The Coming Plague

The diseases are actually quite old. They're both zoonoses, or diseases transmitted from animals to people. In the case of HIV from chimps, and in the case of Ebola we don't know the reservoir species. Maybe bats. From there, these diseases are able to transmit directly from human to human. HIV turned out to be quite well adapted for this, perhaps because SIV was in chimps for so long and also because unlike Ebola, HIV takes awhile to cause symptoms, and symptoms aren't as scary at least for awhile.

It's new patterns of population and travel that have amplified them (and a bit of bad luck). A great book on this for HIV is [Jacques Pepin's The Origin of AIDS] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-AIDS-Jacques-Pepin/dp/0521186374). Essentially we can see based on historic biological samples and the pace of genetic viral mutation that HIV has crossed into humans from chimps multiple times and among primates as well. What changed was that HIV managed to infect a bush meat hunter then make it into a city with a lot of men and few women and then perhaps into a sex worker and . . . away we go. Whereas infecting one bush hunter who then infects his wife and she goes on to have an infected baby - well they all just die out, end of "epidemic."

[Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague] (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-Balance/dp/0140250913/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407301527&sr=1-1&keywords=the+coming+plague) and [David Quammen's Spillover] (http://www.amazon.com/Spillover-Animal-Infections-Human-Pandemic/dp/0393346617/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407301582&sr=1-3&keywords=the+coming+plague) also address this question well.

Not quite the same as your examples, but some of my favorite non-fiction science are...

The Coming Plague

And The Band Played On

The Disappearing Spoon

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

I could probably come up with a few others if any of these seem to be what interests you.

If you like The Hot Zone, you'll love The Coming Plague.

The Coming Plague is a good read.

Are you looking for a textbook or non-fiction books?

I am a microbiologist so these books are biased towards that:

The Coming Plague. Its a little sensationalist but its a good read.

The Hot Zone This is the book that got me into microbiology and started me on the path to being a microbiologist.

The Immortal Life of Henriatta Lacks Light on the science but still puts a personal context to science especially tissue culture.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History Good historical look on a disease that we still fear today.

Not a book but check out This Week in Microbiology and This Week in Virology podcasts. Great and informative.

Oh this epidemic is in the infant stage. It's simple math. He will understand when the hot zone is Africa.
Ebola is a ping pong ball the closer people are compacted population wise

Read this book if you want some truth and not current population concentrations of an infant epidemic
Thanks sponsz for getting it.

The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett

It's my favorite non-fiction book and it pushed me into being pre-med in college. Obviously not about the Cold War (although some of it takes places during then) but it's really well researched and fascinating.

I followed that one with The Coming Plague. It's a bit more heavy, less of a narrative. Man, I was paranoid for MONTHS after reading those two!