Permanently at war
AS A war book, this should stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls or Herman Wouk’s the Winds of War. The casualty lists of mankind’s battle with viruses dwarf the victims of conventional war, the manner of deaths are more gruesome than anything from the Somme, and the sheer ubiquity is staggering.
But how people should gauge the difference between hard scientific data and scare-mongering governments is hard to decide. The flu pandemic that spread through an ill-prepared war-weary post-WWI population killed 20 million people. By contrast, SARS killed “only” 916 people though the global response was near hysterical. And one thing we know for certain, human responses in combating viral pandemics over a 90-year period barely register with the viruses. In any case, they adapt. And when they’re done, they adapt some more.
