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Once upon a pandemic / by Wijayasinghe, Sheila.; Koprantzelas, Anna Despina.;
LSC
Subjects: Stories in rhyme.; COVID-19 (Disease); Pregnancy;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Doom : the politics of catastrophe / by Ferguson, Niall,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Setting the great crisis of 2020 in broad historical perspective, Niall Ferguson challenges the conventional wisdom that our failure to cope better with disaster was solely a crisis of political leadership, as opposed to a more profound systemic problem. Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of a number of developed countries, including the United States, to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why? The facile answer is to blame poor leadership. While populist leaders have certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, more profound problems have been exposed by COVID-19. Only when we understand the central challenge posed by disaster in history can we see that this was also a failure of an administrative state and economic elites that had grown myopic over much longer than just a few years. Why were so many Cassandras for so long ignored? Why did only some countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? Why do appeals to "the science" often turn out to be magical thinking? Drawing from multiple disciplines, including history, economics, public health, and network science, Doom is a global postmortem for a plague year. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson has studied the pathologies that afflict modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online schism. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn--if we want to avoid the doom of irreversible decline"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 (Disease); Epidemics; Political leadership.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Field notes from a pandemic : a journey through a world suspended / by Lou, Ethan,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 186-217)."Equal parts travelogue and pandemic guide, journalist Ethan Lou examines the societal effects of COVID-19 and takes us on a mesmerizing journey around a world that will never be the same. Visiting Beijing in January to see his dying grandfather, Canadian journalist Ethan Lou unknowingly walks into a state under siege. In his journey out of China and into other hot zones in Asia and Europe, he finds himself witnessing the very earliest stages of a virus that will forever change the world as we know it."
Subjects: Lou, Ethan; COVID-19 (Disease);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Moonshot : inside Pfizer's nine-month race to make the impossible possible / by Bourla, Albert,author.;
A riveting, fast-paced, inside look at one of the most incredible private sector achievements in history, Moonshot recounts the intensive nine months in 2020 when the scientists at Pfizer, under the visionary leadership of Dr. Albert Bourla, made "the impossible possible"--creating, testing, and manufacturing a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine that previously would have taken years to develop. Dr. Bourla chronicles how the brilliant, dedicated minds at Pfizer, under the enormous strains of the global pandemic, overcame a series of crises that were compounded by social and political unrest, and reveals the doubts, decisions, obstacles, and failures they encountered. As Dr. Bourla makes clear, Pfizer's success wasn't due to luck; it was because of preparation driven by four simple values--Courage, Excellence, Equity, and Joy.
Subjects: Pfizer Inc.; COVID-19 (Disease); Research.; Viral vaccines.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Until proven safe : the history and future of quarantine / by Manaugh, Geoff,author.; Twilley, Nicola,1978-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Journalists Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley explore the history and future of quarantine, from the Black Death to Big Data. Quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty: it means waiting to see if something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt. In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. The authors track the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space-from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean, built to contain the Black Death, to an experimental Ebola unit in London, and from the hallways of the CDC to closed-door simulations where pharmaceutical execs and epidemiologists prepare for the outbreak of a novel coronavirus. But the story of quarantine ranges far beyond the history of medical isolation. They also tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world's wheat supply, meet NASA's Planetary Protection Officer, tasked with saving Earth from extraterrestrial infections, and introduce us to the corporate tech giants hoping to revolutionize quarantine through surveillance and algorithmic prediction. We live in a disorienting historical moment that can feel both unprecedented and inevitable; Manaugh and Twilley help us make sense of our new reality through a thrillingly reported, thought-provoking exploration of the meaning of freedom, governance, and mutual responsibility."--
Subjects: Quarantine; Epidemics; COVID-19 (Disease);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The plague year : America in the time of Covid / by Wright, Lawrence,1947-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, whose best-selling thriller The End of the October all but predicted our current pandemic, comes another momentous account, this time of COVID-19: its origins, its myriad repercussions, and the ongoing fight to contain it. Beginning with the absolutely critical first moments of the outbreak in China, and ending with an epilogue on the vaccine rollout and the unprecedented events between the election of Joseph Biden and his inauguration, Lawrence Wright's The Plague Year surges forward with essential information--and fascinating historical parallels--examining the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where the first round of faulty test kits cost America precious time; inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger's early alarm about the virus was met with great skepticism; into a COVID ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from Little Africa, South Carolina; into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs; and even inside the human body, diving deep into the science of just how the virus and vaccines function, with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaxxer movement. In turns steely eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, comical, and always precise, Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew. His full accounting does honor to the medical professionals around the country who've risked their lives to fight the virus, revealing America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 (Disease);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The invisible siege : the rise of coronaviruses and the search for a cure / by Werb, Dan,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An engrossing family history of coronaviruses and the modern-day scientific quest to conquer viral epidemics forever. The urgency of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic has fixed humanity's gaze on the present crisis. But the story of this pandemic extends far further back than many realize. In this engrossing narrative, epidemiologist Dan Werb traces the rising threat of the coronavirus family and the attempts by a small group of scientists who worked for decades to stop a looming viral pandemic. When virologist Ralph Baric began researching coronaviruses in the 1980s, the field was a scientific backwater-the few variants that infected humans caused little more than the common cold. But when a novel coronavirus sparked the 2003 SARS epidemic, and then the MERS epidemic a decade later, Baric and his allies realized that time was running out before a pandemic strain would make the inevitable jump from animals to human hosts. In The Invisible Siege, Werb unpacks the dynamic history and microscopic complexity of an organism that has wreaked cycles of havoc upon the world for millennia. Elegantly tracing decades of scientific investigation, Werb reveals how Baric's team of scientists hatched an audacious plan not merely to battle COVID-19 but to end pandemics forever. Yet as they raced to find a cure, they ran into a complicated nexus of science, ethics, industry, and politics that threatened to derail their efforts just as COVID-19 loomed ever larger. The Invisible Siege is an urgent and moving testament to the unprecedented scientific movement to stop COVID-19-and a powerful look at the infuriating factors that threaten to derail discovery and leave the world vulnerable to the inevitable coronaviruses to come"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); Epidemics; Virus diseases;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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World war C : lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and how to prepare for the next one / by Gupta, Sanjay,1969-author.; Loberg, Kristin,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.In 'World War C', CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, MD, offers an accessible, data-packed answer to our biggest questions about Covid-19: What have we learned about this pandemic and how can we prepare for - or prevent - the next one? From the author of 'Keep Sharp'.
Subjects: Communicable diseases; COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-; Epidemics; COVID-19 (Disease);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Aftershocks : pandemic politics and the end of the old international order / by Kahl, Colin H.,1971-author.; Wright, Thomas J.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The COVID-19 crisis is the greatest shock to world order since Worlwd War II. Millions have been infected and killed. The economic crash caused by the pandemic is the worst since the Great Depression, with the International Monetary Fund estimating that it will cost over $9 trillion of global wealth in the next few years. Many will be left impoverished and hungry. Fragile states will be further hollowed out, creating conditions ripe for conflict and mass displacement. Meanwhile, international institutions and alliances already under strain before the pandemic are teetering, while the United States and China, already at loggerheads before the crisis, are careening toward a new Cold War. China's secrecy and assertiveness have shattered hopes that it will become a responsible stakeholder in the international order. Colin Kahl and Thomas Wright's Aftershocks is both a riveting journalistic account of one of the strangest years on record and a comprehensive analysis of the pandemic's ongoing impact on the foundational institutions and ideas that have shaped the modern world. This is the first crisis in decades without a glimmer of American leadership and it shows -- there has been no international cooperation on a quintessential global challenge. Every country has followed its own path -- nationalizing supplies, shutting their borders, and largely ignoring the rest of the world. The international order the United States constructed seven decades ago is in tatters, and the world is adrift. None of this came out of the blue. Public health experts and intelligence analysts had warned for a decade that a pandemic of this sort was inevitable. The crisis broke against a global backdrop of rising nationalism, backsliding democracy, declining public trust in governments, mounting rebellion against the inequalities produced by globalization, resurgent great power competition, and plummeting international cooperation. And yet, there are some signs of hope. The COVID-19 crisis reminds us of our common humanity and shared fate. The public has, for the most part, responded stoically and with kindness. Some democracies -- South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, New Zealand, among others -- have responded well. America may emerge from the crisis with a new resolve to deal with non-traditional threats, like pandemic disease, and a new demand for effective collective action with other democratic nations. America may also finally be forced to come to grips with our nation's inadequacies, and to make big changes at home and abroad that will set the stage for opportunities the rest of this century holds. But one thing is certain: America and the world will never be the same again"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); Epidemics; Epidemics;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Quarantine quilts : creativity in the midst of chaos / by Sider, Sandra,1949-author.; Cox, Meg,writer of foreword.;
Learn how our creative development is shaped by experiences that isolate us from other people. The insightful words of 97 contemporary quilt artists combine with evocative photos of their quarantine creations during the COVID-19 pandemic's first months. Giving us a fascinating perspective, these visual and personal stories of concerns, despairs, and ideas can help connect our own experiences with pandemic to the larger world of creativity.
Subjects: Art quilts.; Quilting.; Quiltmakers.; Quilts; COVID-19 (Disease);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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