SNOT, SNEEZES, AND SUPER-SPREADERS

An in-depth look at viruses.

In this work translated from Dutch, the author rightly points out that viruses are ubiquitous but mostly harmless or even, in the case of bacteriophages, potentially beneficent, but here he focuses on those that are “tiny little troublemakers.” Casting them alternately as cartoon villains (“chuckling away” to themselves as conspiracy theorists reject public health measures) and as terrors that wiped out millions, he explains how viruses in general spread, mutate, and can unpredictably jump from animals to people. Along with retracing in exact detail the likely origins of the 1918 flu pandemic, SARS, AIDS, Ebola, and Covid-19, he describes the ways our immune systems respond to infections and significant medical triumphs. The author does sometimes wander off topic in the interests of telling a colorful story, so the Black Death and Typhoid Mary trot by even though, as he admits, both involved bacteria, not viruses. But a poignant interview with three children who lost their grandfather to Covid-19 adds a tragic personal note to all the tales of generalized catastrophe, and following stout arguments for the value of vaccination, the author closes with hopeful notes about new ways to counter future viral outbreaks and pandemics. Panders’ cartoon drawings of microbes with expressive faces, slimy floods of mucus, and a diverse array of victims (some green-faced) further lighten both message and informational load.

Chronicles episodes in an epic, age-old struggle but lightly enough to keep the megrims at bay.