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Mourn the loss of our dear Barb
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2007
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April
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- Attention Philippa Gregory Fans
- Productive Meeting!
- Still in the Hopper
- Okay so we eat and discuss......
- Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
- The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
- Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White ...
- Her Majesty’s spymaster: Eliz I, Walsingham and t...
- Flight of Passage: A Memoir Rinker Buck
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April
(9)
2 comments:
Wow, now this is my kind of book, but if you've been anywhere around me for the past week you already know that. I can't stop talking about it. Thanks CK for the loan. If you are even remotely interested in things like a pandemic, fear leading foreign and domestic policy in time of war, media silence, and blatant “pig headedness” on behalf of those in charge of keeping us safe then this one’s for you. Sprinkle in the history of John Hopkins University, riveting accounts of death on a scale of 73 million people worldwide in today’s numbers and the process that made American medicine second to none, and one has the rational why this book is not to be missed!
"The threat of new reassorted viruses crossing the species barrier has always existed, but it is increasing as the direct infection of humans by avian viruses increases.
Of course, every time the virus infects a person it has a new opportunity to jump species. As anyone who has read the chapters in this book about the virus itself knows, all influenza viruses originate in birds, but they mutate with extraordinary speed and can trade genes with other influenza viruses. Whenever a bird virus infects a person - or possibly another mammal, especially a pig - and then either reassorts with an existing human influenza virus or, conceivability, mutates directly to create a new virus capable of passing from person to person, a new influenza pandemic may erupt." p. 451
one check mark for this please. sl
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