The title may be inaccurate by this time, but I recommend reading The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry. This account of the confluence of science, medicine, and history as seen in the 1918 pandemic combines the best of scholarly information and readable text. The. National Academies of Science named the book the 2005 outstanding book on science or medicine.
The first chapter is a historical account of how little science and medicine correlated, especially in the US until after the Civil War. Europeans began in depth scientific medical studies earlier and Johns Hopkins followed their lead toward the end of the 19th century. In the next couple of chapters, the account leaves the United States behind Europe until Johns Hopkins supported by the Rockefellers begins to put effort into the science. From the beginning, battlegrounds with fights break out as the doctors, some with real training and some with little more than apprenticeships, argue about findings.
John Barry’s sports background shows up to good advantage when he presents technical material in an appealing and understandable way by comparing viruses to football uniforms. I could understand the immunity metaphor that the body recognizes that the green and white uniform is still the same when you switch the item of shirt and pants but still uses the same colors so it knows to fight a virus that bears the same colors as the last one. One the other hand, if the new virus comes in an orange shirt and black pants, the body doesn’t recognize that it needs to fight.
When he gets to the 1918 pandemic itself, so much sounded familiar. World War I brought masses of people together in close quarters. The epidemic came in waves. There were cities that took steps to close down and those that didn’t. Many politicians advocated leaving well enough alone until the influenza disappeared, and there was great disparity in care for poor and for Black populations.
So much of the book describes the current pandemic that I wondered at how things never change. While we have much in medicine that has come a long way in these hundred years since that pandemic, peoples’ reactions to the politics and science haven’t changed that much. You would think we might have learned something, and maybe we could just by reading this book. It is long but very interesting, and what else do you have to do right now?