THE WISDOM OF PLAGUES: Lessons from 25 Years of Covering Pandemics, best to learn from someone who knows because he was there

THE WISDOM OF PLAGUES: Lessons from 25 Years of Covering Pandemics
DONALD G. McNEIL, Jr.
Simon & Schuster
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Award-winning New York Times reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr. reflects on twenty-five years of covering pandemics—how governments react to them, how the media covers them, how they are exploited, and what we can do to prepare for the next one.

For millions of Americans, Donald McNeil was a comforting voice when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. He was a regular reporter on The New York Times’s popular podcast The Daily and told listeners early on to prepare for the worst. He’d covered public health for twenty-five years and quickly realized that an obscure virus in Wuhan, China, was destined to grow into a global pandemic rivaling the 1918 Spanish flu. Because of his clear advice, a generation of Times readers knew the risk was real but that they might be spared by taking the right precautions. Because of his prescient work, The New York Times won the 2021 Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service.

The Wisdom of Plagues is his account of what he learned over a quarter-century of reporting in over sixty countries. Many science reporters understand the basics of diseases—how a virus works, for example, or what goes into making a vaccine. But very few understand the psychology of how small outbreaks turn into pandemics, why people refuse to believe they’re at risk, or why they reject protective measures like quarantine or vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic was the story McNeil had trained his whole life to cover. His expertise and breadth of sources let him make many accurate predictions in 2020 about the course that a deadly new virus would take and how different countries would respond.

By the time McNeil wrote his last New York Times stories, he had not lost his compassion—but he had grown far more stone-hearted about how governments should react. He had witnessed enough disasters and read enough history to realize that while every epidemic is different, failure was the one constant. Small case-clusters ballooned into catastrophe because weak leaders became mired in denial. Citizens refused to make even minor sacrifices for the common good. They were encouraged in that by money-hungry entrepreneurs and power-hungry populists. Science was ignored, obvious truths were denied, and the innocent too often died. In The Wisdom of Plagues , McNeil offers tough, prescriptive advice on what we can do to improve global health and be better prepared for the inevitable next pandemic.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: "The innocent too often died" in plagues...that is one of those evocative sentences that sound good until you start unpacking them. Does this excuse the public-health indifference around the fate of the incarcerated, as we presume them to be guilty? (Of what, and why, let’s leave for another book review.) Of course not...at least I hope those reading my reviews agree that this is not acceptable...but it illustrates a fact of the author’s writing such a book reveals.

How we talk about plagues, and public health in general, is deeply fraught and will, no matter how carefully phrased, offend and insult someone.

What Author McNeil chose to do with that realization was write the facts of plagues...origins, spreads, containments...in the context of a long career’s take-aways about what works, what doesnt, and how to effectively stop the inevitable rise of some highly infectious and contagious disease from becoming another pandemic. I tell you upfront, you will hate the answer. It involves infringing, to an astonishing degree, your liberties.

The author has covered the topic for an adult human lifetime. He has seen what effective responses look like. The US did not mount an effective response to COVID, and many died who need not have done. I live in an assisted-living facility with many, many smokers. Over thirty of the residents...out of two hundred-ish...died. Many, including me, got sick. Many of those, though not me, went to the hospital to treat their infections. We were lucky it was not a lot worse because the leaders locked us down, passed out masks like candy, made social-distancing rules that they enforced, and still people got infected.

But we live in a state where those measures were put in place quickly and enforced. Fewer died, and got seriously ill, because the patchwork of regulations and responses worked in our favor. That was good luck, which was in short global supply. But we live in a state where those measures were put in place quickly and enforced. Fewer died, and got seriously ill, because the patchwork of regulations and responses worked in our favor. That was good luck, which was in short global supply. There were even then other challenges concurrent with COVID, eg monkeypox, that never became pandemics despite having the makings of such. One big reason is the public-health response was faster, more openly communicated, and more united. This limited the pathogens’ natural ability to spread.

What the author says to us is that solipsistic selfish behavior in defense of your little "liberties" is fatal in the context of a pandemic. Sometimes Life is not fair, but to save the lives of others you must be ready and willing to accept the loss of unlimited, unrestricted personal "liberty." Sarcastic tone implied by quotes very much intended.

Author McNeil is a bona fide expert on this subject. He knows from being there what is needed to stop a pandemic from arising. I sometimes found his explications, deeply grounded and reported with clarity, to be repetitive, so can not offer a perfect five-star rating. I devoutly hope that some who did not read The Daily during 2022 will still find this book and respond to his "I was there, I saw it happen," account of pandemics past, and re-evaluate their stances on responding to the absolutely inevitable and guaranteed recurrence of a pandemic.

A boy can dream.