Viruses, Pandemics, and Immunity

An excellent book providing an accessible information in layperson’s terms of how viruses emerge to cause pandemics, how our immune system combats them and how diagnostic tests, vaccines and anti-viral therapies work. These concepts provide the foundation of our public health policies. The various approaches undertaken by various Govt’s during the Covid-19 pandemic are so much more clearer to me now!

I enjoyed this book very much. I learned alot about the subject. Viruses and pandemics are easier to understand. I look forward to much improved vaccines in the future.

This is a masterfully written book that explains much of the basic science relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite being relatively short and readable in just a few days, the book covers a large and diverse amount of territory, including historical context, basics of viruses, epidemiology, therapeutics, immunity, and vaccines. The entire book is written in a way that is easy to follow, and would be broadly accessible to scientists and non-scientists alike. I really enjoyed the hand-crafted illustrations, which provided a beautiful accompaniment to the text. This is the one resource -- above any other -- that I would recommend to my family, friends, and also students (both undergraduate and post-graduate), as a first reading to get a broad and basic scientific understanding of the key issues relating to the pandemic.

I hardly knew any biology when I started reading this book. In light of the current pandemic, I wanted to understand how we humans could conquer this terrible new virus, or if we even had the ability to conquer it. The internet is saturated with all sorts of conflicting information and anecdotal evidence; much of it is unreliable or even outright lies. I wanted to be able to make my own independent judgement based on trustworthy, reliable science. This was the perfect book for me to achieve these objectives. It’s not difficult to read/understand and contains comprehensive knowledge on viruses and our immune system. In layman’s terms, it tells vivid stories about a human history that was filled with disastrous attacks by viruses, how scientists discovered the immune system, and how they continue to discover and develop ways to aid our immune system in fighting against viruses, old and new. By the time I finished this book, not only did I feel that I have gained so much knowledge and a newfound understanding of viruses and our immune system, but I also came away with a much more optimistic outlook on our ongoing fight against this new virus. My view on vaccines has brightened up considerably. This book makes me hopeful, and I am sure that it will make you hopeful too!

I would highly recommend "Viruses'. While Dr. C surveys the largely forgotten plagues, pestilences and contagions throughout history, going back to the times of the Egyptians, it is as fresh and up to date as this morning’s newspaper on the source, spreading, impact and therapeutics of the COVID-19 virus. The breath and scope of the survey from the Egyptians to this morning’s newspaper is beyond impressive. It is an incredible piece of work – highly readable and approachable for a lay non-scientist; it is very informative and thoughtful; like a good research effort it is objective, factual and fair, absent all the politicization and histrionics of the day; it is humbling – it took 30 years for a Polio vaccine and after 40 years we still have no HIV cure; but it is hopeful – partnerships with researchers, clinicians, manufacturers, government, bio-techs are all working together in unprecedented ways and moving at “warp speed” for developing therapies and vaccines; and it is extremely timely. I hope you get the opportunity to read it and enjoy it as much as I did.

A magnificent, and much appreciated, contribution from Chakraborty and Shaw. Even though I considered myself reasonably well educated (for a lay person) on the subjects covered, I learned a lot and got great context for everything I thought I already knew. I am pretty picky about books such as this striking the right balance between scientific accuracy and lucidity for the lay person, and this one knocked it out of the proverbial park. The authors issue a strong call to action and, while I think it will be very challenging to see it acted on it today's political environment, their manifesto hits all the right notes (in my opinion.)