Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox
Author:
Genres: History, Nonfiction
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: History, Nonfiction
Book Type: Paperback
Due to my love of history, I was hoping for more on smallpox and its effect on human history. But this was only a very small part of the book. There is more on the medical attempts to control smallpox, much of which I was already familiar with. I use to write and lecture on how insects, primarily insect-vectored diseases, changed history. As a result, I also became very interested in non-insect-vectored diseases.
After spending several chapters describing how the disease was eradicated world-wide, the book spends a great deal of time on the development of smallpox as a "military weapon," with the superpowers and others playing games with each other.
Plus, it included a review of a high-level U.S. military/health exercise using smallpox as a bio-terrorism weapon against the U.S. by extremists, which proved to be a failure for the government, very similar to the current government failure with Covid-19. As a result, readers will also realize where we went wrong with Covid-19.
After spending several chapters describing how the disease was eradicated world-wide, the book spends a great deal of time on the development of smallpox as a "military weapon," with the superpowers and others playing games with each other.
Plus, it included a review of a high-level U.S. military/health exercise using smallpox as a bio-terrorism weapon against the U.S. by extremists, which proved to be a failure for the government, very similar to the current government failure with Covid-19. As a result, readers will also realize where we went wrong with Covid-19.
