(Lau)(ren)’s Reviews > The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance > Status Update

I’m just so angry!!! We know how to handle contagious diseases!!! We just don’t do it because capitalism!!!

It’s almost like gutting our public health infrastructure during the 70s and 80s means that our failures re: COVID were inevitable. Anyone who was paying attention should have seen this coming.

Human beings are so incredibly intelligent and so incredibly foolish. I wish we were stupider but wiser.

It’s a miracle that the human race survives at all.

Truly so impressed by this feat of reportage-meets-science-writing but I’m side-eyeing the claim that it was gay men who were responsible for Stonewall. Come on, Laurie. Even in 2009 we knew that it was trans women.

I am not trying to downplay the immense suffering, trauma, and loss of life individuals and humanity in general experienced during the Covid pandemic. But honestly, what I'm taking away from this book is that we got lucky in that it was SARS-CoV-2 and not something much, much worse.