Nicholas A. Christakis

This book was fine? But a bit underwhelming. Not what I expected somehow. As a summary of how we got to now it was thorough, but while there were some interesting flashes here and there, much of it felt familiar from reading I'd been doing all along. I also was hoping for a little more prognosticating — I feel like it was at least implied by the subtitle. Then again, it does say "on the way we live," not "on the way we will live."

That said, this was a solid and accessible history of COVID-19, and connections to past pandemics. While I was sometimes a bit impatient with the amount of familiar material, it was also nice to have this all together in one place.… (mere)

A very good, well-researched treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic, written in the summer of 2020. The author does a good job of placing this pandemic in the history of pandemics and illness in general, and in the U.S. more specifically. Observations of what might come are interesting - regarding the track of the medical side of the pandemic his calls were fairly accurate, but the political and social predictions wer unfortunately too optimistic (the possibility of which he appears to be afraid).

Highly recommended to those interested in pandemics, the track of COVID-19, and the history of medical practice.… (mere)

The COVID-19 pandemic came on so suddenly and with such relative ferocity that one can be forgiven for being confused by all the misinformation floating around in the first few months after March 2020. However, epidemiologists did know how to predict and prepare for what was happening, but unfortunately this was also at a time when public trust in experts and institutions was down. Warnings from scientists and top officials weren't granted any special consideration in the minds of the populace. Also, people were scared and scared people love to turn to pseudoscience for answers.

Nicholas Christakis' Apollo's Arrow is an informed review of what happened before, during, and after the worst global pandemic in 100 years. It's also a forecast of what to expect for the next pandemic, which surprisingly would be different if it happened in 20 or 30 years (our collective memory of 2020 remains intact) versus in 100 years (no collective memory).

The biggest revelation for me was how much epidemiologists DO know about viruses and how they move about a population. What looks like an impossible web of contract tracing is a much tighter science than would otherwise seem. However, little of this matters if the public doesn't believe the evidence presented. Humans survived this 'dress rehearsal' COVID-19 pandemic but barely and at great cost. How are we going to respond to the next one?… (mere)