40. Alex Whiting, “New Pandemic Insurance to Prevent Crises Through Early Payouts,” Reuters, March 26, 2015.
41. Interview with James Wilson.
42. Christopher Joyce, “Cellphones Could Help Doctors Stay Ahead of an Epidemic,” Shots, NPR’s Health Blog, Aug. 31, 2011.
43. Pan American Health Organization, “Epidemiological Update: Cholera,” March 20, 2014.
44. Belle-Anse is not unique in suffering the effects of poorly maintained aid projects. The entire country is littered with them. According to a 2012 survey, more than a third of the wells in Haiti constructed by aid groups—most of which are left unmanaged—are contaminated with fecal bacteria. After returning to Port-au-Prince, I met a young British man who told me with pride that he was using his trust fund money to install toilets at a local school. But despite the fact of the ongoing cholera epidemic and the manifest reality that Haitians were regularly exposed to fecal contamination in the environment, he hadn’t considered the issue of where the toilets would deposit their contents. When I asked him, he paused. “In the river, I guess,” he finally said. “Like everyone else!” See Jocelyn M. Widmer et al., “Water-Related Infrastructure in a Region of Post-Earthquake Haiti: High Levels of Fecal Contamination and Need for Ongoing Monitoring,” The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 91, no. 4 (Oct. 2014): 790–97.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My sources for Pandemic varied widely, from sanitation engineers and archaeologists to geneticists and epidemiologists, but they all had one thing in common, which is a willingness to talk to a science journalist who called up out of the blue. While I have cited only the handful of sources whose words I quote directly, they were all instrumental in the making of this book. Without their generosity, it could never have been written.
The research and reporting I conducted over the past six years would have been impossible, too, without the support of a number of individuals and organizations. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, besides supporting my reporting trips, helped turn my narratives of the cholera epidemics in 1832 New York City and 2010 Port-au-Prince into a dazzling interactive visualization (“Mapping Cholera,” at choleramap.pulitzercenter.org). This parallel project on the two epidemics punctuating cholera’s pandemic sweep crystallized my understanding of the social and political roots of pandemics. Peter Sawyer, Dan McCarey, Nathalie Applewhite, Zach Child, Jon Sawyer, and the rest of the team at the center made it possible. Oliver Schulz and Ivan Gayton at Médecins Sans Frontières, in addition to being heroes on the front lines fighting epidemics, tackled technical and bureaucratic hurdles on multiple continents to allow me to use the remarkable data they collected on cholera in Haiti. Randi Hutter Epstein, Matthew Knutzen, Steven Romalewski, Don Boyes, and others provided critical early help as well, and the New York Academy of Medicine hosted a public event in connection with the project and this book.
Jim and Mary Ottaway and Lisa Phillips at SUNY–New Paltz offered me an honorary journalism professorship, which allowed me to teach a class on investigating epidemics. The semester-long collaborative investigative project on Lyme disease that resulted was instrumental in my understanding of that cryptic spillover disease. I thank them, and all my students, whose hard work made it possible. Nassim Assefi and her colleagues at TEDMED offered me their well-lit stage to showcase my ideas about pandemics and how we understand them. Jodi Solomon and her staff provided me with the opportunity to present the material in this book to thoughtful audiences across the country.
I owe a huge debt to the journalist Philippe Rivière, formerly of Le Monde Diplomatique, who not only designed the lovely maps featured here but also provided critical feedback. Thoughtful comments from my dear friend Michelle Markley and my parents, Dr. Hasmukh Shah and Dr. Hansa Shah, also immensely improved this book. Thanks, too, to David Fisman, who generously made time to review an early draft, and to Michael Olesen, Dao Tran, and Trent Duffy, who offered helpful comments. Frances Botkin, who accompanied me to Haiti, made a difficult trip much less so; Jennifer Ballengee listened attentively to my long harangues as I wrote draft after draft. Scientific American magazine, Yale Environment 360, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, and Le Monde Diplomatique were among the outlets that published articles that supported the reporting on which this book is based. David Fisman and Ashleigh Tuite put together the story of cholera’s spread along the Erie Canal and shared their data with me. Su Dongxia provided cheerful logistical support in Guangzhou, as did Rita Choksi in New Delhi and Sean Roubens Jean Sacra in Port-au-Prince. Catherine Guenther provided research assistance.
I thank my lovely agent, Charlotte Sheedy, who gifted me with her unwavering support, and my editor, Sarah Crichton, and the rest of the team at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, who brought this book into the world. Finally, for sustaining me through the years of reporting and writing, I thank Mark Bulmer and our sons, Z and K.
INDEX
The index that appears in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
adaptive theory of aging
Africa; burial rituals; cholera; Ebola; HIV/AIDS; monkeypox; polio. See also specific countries
African Americans
African Union
aging; adaptive theory of
agriculture; antibiotic use in livestock; dawn of; Irish potato famine; livestock excreta; “sewage farming”
Agulhas Current
AIDS. See HIV/AIDS
air travel; disease and
Alaska
alcohol
Al Qaeda
Amazon
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Medical Association
amphibians; chytrid fungus
anesthesia
animals; animal microbes turn into human pathogens; antibiotic use in; cholera in; domestication of; extinction; fecal pollution; pathogens; scapegoating; sick; wet markets. See also specific animals
anomalies
anthrax
antibiotics; disease resistance to; overuse of; private interests and
antibodies
Arab Spring
Argentina
Aristide, Jean-Bertrand
Arizona
artemisinin
Ascel Bio
Ashenburg, Katherine
Asia; avian influenza; cholera. See also specific countries
Asian tiger mosquito
Associated Press
Astor, John Jacob
Atlantic Ocean; triangle trade
attractiveness
Aum Shinrikyo
Australia
Australopithecus
autism, and vaccines
autoimmune diseases
avian influenzas
Aylward, Bruce
Aztecs
Bacillus anthracis
bacteria; cholera; discovery of; fecal pollution; gut; logic of pandemics; Lyme disease; MRSA; NDM-1; resistance to antibiotics; sea and. See also specific bacteria
bacteriophage
Bactrim
ballast water
Baltic Sea
Baltimore
Bangladesh
Bank of New York
bark beetles
Bas-Congo virus
basic reproductive number
bathhouses
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
bats; Ebola and
Bay of Bengal
Bazalgette, Joseph
beauty
Beck, Lewis
behavioral adaptation
Belize
Belle-Anse, Haiti
Bering Strait
beta-lactam antibiotics
Bible
Big Pharma
bin Laden, Osama
biomedicine, modern
bioterrorism
birds; avian flu; biodiversity; immune behavi
or; viruses. See also specific birds
Blake, Nelson Manfred
blame. See scapegoating
bleach treatment
bloodletting
Borrelia burgdorferi
Boston
Bouillaud, Jean-Baptiste
Brazil
breakbone fever
Brilliant, Larry
British Medical Journal
Brockmann, Dirk
Bronx River
Browne, Joseph
bubonic plague. See plague
Buddhists
Bulgaria
Burnet, Sir Macfarlane
Burr, Aaron
Burton, Neel
Caenorhabditis elegans
Cairo
California
Callahan, William J.
calomel
Cambodia
Canada; SARS
canals
cancer
C&O Canal
carbon
Caribbean
Carlton, J. T.
Carroll, Lewis, Through the Looking Glass
Carson, Rachel
Casadevall, Arturo
cats
celiac disease
Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
cesspools
Chad
Chadwick, Edwin
Chambers, J. S.
Chan, Margaret
change blindness
Charles X, King
Charleston
Chaunu, Pierre
Chesapeake Bay
Chicago
chicken pox
chickens
chikungunya
children; cholera; diaper wipes; fecal pollution; Lyme disease; mortality; vaccines
Chile
chimpanzees
China; avian influenza; cholera; crowds; economy; pigs; SARS; yewei cuisine
chipmunks
chitin
chlorine disinfection
cholera; in animals; balls; climate change and; containment strategies; cover-ups; cures for; death; debut of; decline of; El Tor vibrio; fecal pollution and; germ theory; Haiti; Hippocratic medicine and; history of; London; medicine and; miasmatism and; New York City; pandemics; quarantines; resurgence of; riots; scapegoating; sea and; secret epidemic in Italy; on ships; South America; transportation of; treatments; vaccines
cholesterol
Christians, hygienic rituals and
Christian Science Monitor, The
chytrid fungus
Cité Soleil, Haiti
civet cats
clams
climate; change; El Niño; sea
clindamycin
Clinton, DeWitt
cloning
coal
Coccidioides immitis
Cohn, Samuel
colds
colistin
Colombia
colonialism
Colorado
Colwell, Rita
confirmation bias
Congo
Connecticut
contagion, nineteenth-century ideas on
containment strategies; cholera; cooperation; early detection; future of surveillance system; New York City; nineteenth-century; political corruption and; public alerts; quarantines; shipping and; twentieth-century
Continuous Plankton Recorder
cooperation
copepods
cordons sanitaire
coronaviruses
corruption; containment strategies and; disease cover-ups; New York City; private water companies; rising power of private interests
Costa Rica
cover-ups, disease
cows
C. posadasii
Crohn’s disease
Croton River
crowds; China; Ebola and; India; influenza and; New York City; urbanization and; virulence and
crows
Cuba; cholera
Cunnion, Stephen
cures; bloodletting; for cholera; germ theory; Hippocratic medicine and; modern biomedicine and; saltwater
cytokine interleukin-6
Czech Republic
Danticat, Edwidge
Danzig, Richard
Darwin, Charles
Daszak, Peter
Davis, Mike
death; burial practices; cholera; Ebola; evolution of; genes; mistaken; pathogens and; rates; SARS; signs of
deer
deforestation
dehydration
Delpech, Jacques Mathieu
dengue fever
Denmark
depression
Detroit
diabetes
diaper wipes
diarrhea
Dickens, Charles
Dicrocoelium dendriticum
digestive system
DNA
Doctors Without Borders
dogs; excreta
Dominican Republic
doxycycline
Drake, Daniel
drought
drugs; antibiotic overuse; development of; disease resistance to; generic; industry. See also specific drugs
“dry” hygiene
ducks
Duffy, John
dysentery
East India Company
East River
Ebola; crowds and; death; fear of; quarantines; scapegoating
Ebolanoia
Echinococcus multilocularis
EcoHealth Alliance
E. coli
Economist, The
economy; Chinese; crowds and urbanization; global; housing boom; Indian; industrial; quarantines and
Ecuador
Egypt; influenza; zabaleen
Elbe River
elements, four
Elizabeth I, Queen of England
El Niño
El Tor vibrio
endemic diseases
Enlightenment
ENSO
epidemiological transitions
Erie Canal
ethnocentrism
Europe; cholera; colonialism; history of waste removal; medieval hygiene; O104:H4 outbreak; plague; urban growth; vaccines. See also specific countries
Evans, Richard
evolution; of death; immune behavior and; pathogens and; selfish gene theory; of sex
excreta; animal; cholera and; history of removal systems; New York City; “night soil”; in rivers; water pollution; Western attitudes toward
extinction
fasciitis, necrotizing
fear of pandemics
feces. See excreta
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Federalists
fenugreek
ferrets
fertilizer
Fincher, Corey L.
Finland
fire
fish
Five Points slum
Fleming, Alexander
flies
flophouses
Florida
flush toilets
food; contamination; feces as
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
forests; bark beetles; destruction
fossil fuels
France; cholera; measles; urban growth
fungi chytrid; climate change and; pathogens. See also specific fungi
future of pandemics
Gabon
Galen
Gambia
Ganges River
gangrene
Gangs of New York (film)
gases
Gates, Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation
Gaulter, Henry
geese
generalist species
genetics; mutations; pathogen-recognition; selfish gene theory; sexual reproduction and; suicide genes
George, Rose
German immigrants
Germany; cholera; O104:H4 outbreak; urban growth; water systems
germ theory
Ghana
Girard, R
ené
globalization; surveillance system for disease
gluten
gorillas
Goths
Grant, Hugh
Great Britain; cholera; colonialism; Great Stink; measles; Parliament; urban growth
Great Stink
Greece; ancient
Greene, Asa
Guangzhou
Guinea
Gurney, Goldsworthy
H1N1 flu
H3N2 virus
H5N1 virus
H7N9 virus
HPAI flu
habitat destruction
Haines, Michael
Haiti; cholera; fecal pollution; HIV/AIDS; tourism
Hajj pilgrims
Hamburg
Hamilton, Alexander
Hamilton, William
Hardy, Alister
Harrison, Benjamin
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
HealthMap
heart disease
Henry III, King
hepatitis B
herd immunity
highways
Hindus, hygienic rituals and
Hippocrates
Hippocratic Corpus
Hippocratic medicine; miasmas
HIV/AIDS; scapegoating
HLA genes
Homo erectus
Homo sapiens
homosexuality
Hone, Philip
Hong Kong
horizontal gene transfer
hormones, and immune defenses
horses
hot spots, surveillance of
housing; nineteenth-century boom in; reform; tenements
Hudson River 68
humors, four
Hungarian immigrants
Huq, Anwar
Hussein, Saddam
hydrochloric acid
hygiene; history of waste removal and
Iceland
immigrants; cholera and; Irish; scapegoating
immortality
immune behavior
immune defenses
Incas
Independent, The
India; antibiotic overuse; caste system; cholera; crowds; economy; fecal pollution; hospitals; medical tourism; NDM-1
Indian Ocean
Indonesia
indoor plumbing
industrialization
Industrial Revolution
infectious diseases. See bacteria; pandemics; pathogens; specific diseases; viruses
Infectious Diseases Society of America
inflammation
inflammatory bowel diseases
influenza; avian; crowds and; H5N1; H1N1; pigs and; scapegoating; type A; type B; type C
insecticides
insects, disease carried by. See also specific insects and diseases
International Sanitary Convention
International Society of Travel Medicine, GeoSentinel program of
Iraq
Ireland
Irish immigrants; famine refugees; scapegoating
iron pipes
iron ships