Thank you netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I appreciated reading the information presented here. We all need to be more informed of how illness spreads in general, and what we are personally responsible to do to help prevent further spread of not just this, but all illnesses in the public. A bit cumbersome to wade through, but worth adding to my resources. Thank you for offering this for us all to read!

Thank you netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This was a well written and informative book on how covid 19 emerged, what actions were not taken that could have saved lives and what our countries could do to avoid pandemics in the future. Covid 19 has been a devastating pandemic that is still hurting countries even as we begin to get vaccinated. I fear what the next pandemic will be, I hope our countries are ready.

This was an interesting (and scary) look at how COVID-19 emerged, how it spread, and what lessons we can learn from it for the next pandemic. According to the author, the next pandemic is not a matter of if, but when. Despite past events such as SARS and the 2009 swine flu outbreak, the world is still not as prepared as it should or could be, as we have seen with the response to COVID-19. In the final chapter of the book the author describes seven lessons for the future that can help the world be better prepared for a pandemic in the future. Recommended reading.

I received an advance copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest an unbiased review.

Interesting read about the pandemic that we have going on called Covid-19. Wasn’t sure how this would be approached by the author, but she does a good job in presenting facts so that the reader has a better understanding of what is going on and what should have been done to prevent the spread of this. Can we overcome it? Time will tell, but governments must do a better job in having people in place to prevent something like this happening again by having cooperation between countries and agencies involved as well as having the resources need to overcome something like this. I recommend this book for anyone interested in learning about Covid-19 (or as the author calls it, the coronavirus).
Thanks to netgally and the publisher for an ARC of this book in return for an honest opinion.

4.5 stars rounding up to 5.

This was a very interesting read - and it came at a critical time. I find science fascinating, but I would normally never pick up a book about any scientific topic due to the fact that the writing is usually quite boring or too scientific. However, with this book, MacKenzie made it both easy to read and understand - and it was never boring.

MacKenzie clearly explains how COVID-19 came to be a pandemic and how the scientific community essentially predicted it would happen. She doesn’t hold anything back and puts every known detail out there. It’s very honest - and quite frankly, very terrifying. She also talks about previous pandemics and epidemics & how they’ve affected scientific research and response, as well as the impact on people globally. It was very eye-opening & I learned a LOT of information.

Even though this pandemic is still ongoing, MacKenzie really nailed the reasons *why* this pandemic occurred & *how* it could have been stopped in its tracks. She also gives plenty of solutions for how we can prevent the next one - which the scientific community believes is imminent. Ultimately, this was a very good read & an important one, at that.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Books for providing a copy of the e-book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a great source of information about pandemics and a nice summary of the ways the scientific community has been warning the world that a pandemic is coming and the ways all of us need to recognize how to make our preparedness better for the next. Essentially, COIVD19 has been mild and Debora MacKenzie talks in depth about why this should be our wake up call.

It was a bit long winded, and some of it did go way over my head so that was not perfect.

But thank you to Debora MacKenzie for giving this in depth explanation!

I must be a glutton for punishment for reading this kind of book while the world is still not done with COVID-19. However, I also want to stay informed and learn things without having to wade through the dramafest that news in general have become, so all in all, this was a very appropriate read: informative, interesting, considering the ecological impact as well (no, killing all the bats is not a solution, plus it would collapse the whole ecosystem anyway), on the whistle-blowing side yet also covering what could be done (a.k.a not being alarmist just for the sake of being alarmist)… and not so depressing or anxiety-inducing as I had feared.

I didn’t know the author before reading this specific piece of her work. As a scientific journalist who’s been working that field for decades, she was able to bring her own experience and point of view, gathered from observations made on previous outbreaks, and that also gave the book a more personalised tone. In general, “COVID-19” seemed to me well-researched, easy to grasp and follow (no reliance on over-complicated scientific terms here), and a reflection on how countering such viruses is definitely not only scientists’ responsibility, but also governments’, for implementing (or choosing not to…) the policies that will help fund research and curb the spreading. (Let’s just say I wasn’t too impressed with the UK and the USA on that one… though they were far from being the only ones farting in their hands about this).

Conclusion: Perhaps not the kind of book I’d recommend to an audience who already knows a lot about SARS-CoV-2, because it reads more like an introduction—but as, well, a good intro and recap on the topic, it did the job top notch for me.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!


This was such an interesting account of the pandemic! It was honestly a little creepy to read while in the midst of it (especially with positive cases rising) but it was super informative. The author had a way with presenting all the facts and subtly adding in her opinion without trying to sway the reader. Now all I want to do is google proMed and see what comes up lol! I’ve been living epidemic and pandemic nonfiction lately and this was a great one to add to the list!

I volunteered to read this book, through netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. This book has a lot of information about COVID-19. How to prepare for the next epidemic. This book is interesting and helps you understand about the scientific world. This is a 4 star book.

Easy to read, while still maintains its feel of credibility and enough scientific accounts to help the reader to believe it. This book reminds me of a more reliable news segment where it talks about all the signs we ignored when certain people (ex. Chinese) knew and when it was talked about. It's clear this book is an attempt to help enlighten people so that we don't end up in this scenario again. Overall information but easy read.

Such an interesting and important read! The language used was not too overly scientific, but still very informative.

As an epidemiologist myself, I thought that this was an interesting book to read. It was written well, and made some good points; however I do want to emphasize that there is still so much research being done on COVID-19. This is by all means not a textbook and is written in the middle of the pandemic when many things are still unknown about the virus SARS-CoV-2. It is an interesting read and I would recommend it to those who are interested in leaning more about this topic; however I would like readers to keep in mind that this was written when some things about the pandemic were and are still not fully understood.

This book explains, as concisely as possible, how multiple systems and methods put in place for containing a pandemic or treating victims all failed. It talks about what went right, and how this could have been much worse. It leads the reader to consider what would be best to do to solve these problems before the next pandemic hits. As this was densely-packed with facts, I had to stop reading to consider them. I found the book extremely thought-provoking.

It dispels many misunderstandings of terms currently being bantered about, such as “herd immunity”, “second wave” and beliefs that diseases become less deadly as they spread and time goes on. It touches on issues with vaccines, especially “leaky” vaccines that allow the virus to spread while not causing symptoms, thus select for more virulent viruses.

It also taught me some of the updates with virology and immunology which I did not know, which explain how vaccines are being developed much faster than they were in the past.

I'm not exactly sure why I chose to read this book as I had been trying to mute and avoid all things Covid related for the last couple months in order to try and not go absolutely nuts.  But this book ended up being very informative - breaking down what we knew about the virus, how many experts knew that a pandemic was coming and the missteps that were made in trying to contain it.  I can only hope that there were some very big lessons learned and while the book talks about here possibly being more viruses coming in the future, I hope that these lessons will help us move forward and not end up having anything like this happen to the world again.  Very eye opening and I am sure there could be several sequels written for this book as we are still in the middle of it and have so much more to learn! 

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated.

This is a great book giving details about the Covid 19 virus. Giving scientific details and historical details on virus'. I learned a lot by reading this.

Initially I was excited to read this book since Covid-19 is a relevant topic to life right now. I made it to 44% of the way through before I decided that I could not finish reading this book. Not to say that the information isn’t relevant or that people should not read this book, I was very put off by how the author kept inserting her thoughts and comments when they were not necessary. There were far too many “of course” and other words in quotations stating the authors thoughts instead of letting the reader come to their own conclusions for my liking.

Well-researched scientific, but without science jargon, study on how COVID-19 started, what warnings were ignored, and how we can do better in the future. Because, unfortunately, there are more pandemics in humanity’s future.

Questions and Answers from the Book

1. When did Chinese scientists first talk online about the mysterious pneumonia that evolved into COVID-19? December 30, 2019.

2. Was the virus’ impact foreseen by scientists? Yes, a table top simulation mirroring a COVID-type pandemic was held in in 2019 at John Hopkins involving government and industry leaders. In 2014, the World Bank and the OECD placed a pandemic the top risk above terrorism.

3. Should we just kill all the bats to stop future coronavirus pandemics? This was the number one question that I wanted to answer by reading this book. It seems like such an obvious answer.

91% of coronaviruses “live in bats, making them the world headquarters of coronavirus evolution.” A 2017 research review showed that “bats were still significantly more likely to harbor diseases affecting humans than any other group of mammals.” However, “it is actually hard to catch viruses directly from bats.” Plus, “nearly a quarter of all mammal species are bats.” That’s a lot of killing.

Instead, perhaps, we should try and determine how bats live perfectly well with all these viruses inside them. Bats’ ability to dampen their immune system’s response allows them to live decades with a virus. It also allows them to avoid cancer too. Both of those facts let them live twenty times longer than a similarly-sized mouse. Plus “bats are calculated to do $3.7 million worth of crop protection a year in the US alone” killing predatory insects. They pollinate fruits and plants including the cactus used for tequila.

4. So how is the virus transferred to humans? The author suggests two ways. First, by stacking cages of different live wild animals in China’s wet markets. This allows the virus to move from bats to another animal to humans. Second, by use of bat guano (excrement) in traditional Chinese medicine. Because there is an underlying question, why do these types of viruses usually start to move into humans only in China? Perhaps because of the wet markets and traditional Chinese medicine that are only located and practiced there.

“Science didn’t fail us. The ability of governments to act on it, together, did.”

There were many warnings of the pandemic that went unheeded. Our current worldwide movement of goods and people between countries is definitely helping the spread of disease from country-to-country. Letting the US medical stockpile expire and our hospitals using just-in-time ordering systems, rather than stockpiling inventory, left us flat-footed as far as PPE when the pandemic hit. Hopefully, we will adjust our preparedness and response to better handle future pandemics.

If you found the questions and answers above interesting (and believe me they are only the tip of the iceberg of knowledge within the book, COVID-19), you will love this book as much as I did. 5 stars and one of my favorite science books this year!

Thanks to Hachette Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This is the perfect book for anyone that wants to know how we got where we did with COVID-19 and how we can avoid another pandemic. The information is presented in a manner that you don't have to have a scientific background to understand it.

This had some good information but was very one-sided and quite opinionated about the Coronavirus pandemic. I already knew much of the information presented because my brother is a virologist and has a lot more smarts and better advice than what this book offers. Obviously this author did a lot of research for a science based book but the ideas are general and may be for the novice.

Not my favorite read about the pandemic and what is being done to save humanity; the first chapter was ok. Sorry if I am being harsh but that's my opinion about all the information on the virus being presented, this is not the one I would follow.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and Hachette Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Available: 6/1/20