Those who come to this book with a background in History, as I do, will find this book rather inadequate. Many of the arguments were already made several decades back by William McNeil in his Plagues and People. And Of course, Alfred J Crossby in his Columbian Exchange has traversed this territory of pathogens and their impact on History. However the book is the first serious attempt at looking at the Global History of a Pandemic that is still reaping its macabre harvest the world over. While Ferguson rightly states that China was responsible for the Pandemic he avoids the question: Did China unleash a bio logical weapon against an unsuspecting world? Given the response to the outbreak in Wuhan, this question has a great deal of salience. Why did China suppress the human to human transmission and delay the confirmation of the deadly outbreak until it had spread to nearly 67 countries. The WHO which played an effective role under Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Prime Minister of Norway, was rendered ineffective, indeed an accomplice in shielding China from international scrutiny. Dr Tederos was quite unconcerned about the responsibilities WHO had towards the World.
Niall Ferguson has provided a tour de force through all the major Epidemics and Disasters in History and he zeroes in on the 1918-19 Global Influenza Epidemic. This Pandemic which cost nearly 40 million lives was also a Corona virus which was effectively dealt with by a combination of medical intervention and sanitation without the use of Lockdown as strategy. The US Government under President Trump went in for total lockdown which was effective in bringing down infection rates but tanked both the economy and the political future of Donald Trump.
An interesting feature of the book is the critique of the public health policies and measures adopted b different Governments. In UK the first instinct of Neil Ferguson (not to be confused with the author of this book) advocated herd immunity. Allow the virus a free run and hope that at the end of the dance people will be immune. From this ridiculous policy the team, New and Emerging Respiratory Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG). jumped to an alarming and obviously unrealistic daily rate of virus transmission. Like Generals fighting the last war, epidemiologists are busy preparing for the last Great Pandemic. The course of the pandemic has defied all theories, statistical extrapolations and models deployed by experts.
Added to the noise of the experts was the cacophony in the Popular Press. Captive of the big Corporations like Google, Amazon, Twitter and FaceBook the Press took a negative stance e towards political leaders of Democratic countries. For example FB prevented the use of its platform for contact tracing thereby helping to spread rather than contain the Pandemic. And mega tech companies, reluctant to alienate China as its Market was huge, branded Trump's China travel ban "racist" though they knew that the disease had traveled from Wuhan, China. Niall Ferguson rightly condemns the 'morality play" quality of COVID 19 reportage as though popular political leaders were responsible for the disease. Quoting from Washington Post, the author has demonstrated that the paper consistently downplayed the threat posed by the disease and certainly shied away from asking searching questions about the role of China. Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that Jeff Bezos is both the owner of Amazon and Washington Post. And China is a huge market. In a happy eloquent phrase which will resonate with those who cherish human freedom, Ferguson writes, "the East India Companies of the internet have plundered enough data; they have caused enough famines of truth; and plagues of the mind".
This is a book which is topical and timed to sell as the flavor of the season is COVID.
