Epidemiology Books I Miraculously Read Before 2020
Edit: I had this in my drafts since 2018 to link up with a potential top 1o freebie post after I read more, it was supposed to be various health topics, but since I read more in the epidemiology field since starting the draft and because of the pandemic and I only had one other book in a different health section, I decided to make this one an epidemiology/disease post. Up to the beginning of this year, I was seriously considering trying to get a masters in epidemiology and history with a focus on historical pandemics to help inform for vaccinations. And then this curve ball was thrown (actually I would argue two curve balls, the actual pandemic and then the handling of it, I still feel like I’m living in an alternate reality, I feel like misinformation has the upper hand, that journalists, politicians, and people twisting the facts of disease have the control and the loudest voices, the loudest voice in my family, is not anyone in the medical field or the CDC, to the point that I wonder, Has being informed helped me? Am I informed? What is information? What do I trust? What did I actually know? Anything? Nothing? Why? Wherefore? What? What on earth? Who am I?).
I’ve included the dates I read to point out how weirdly timed it all was. I mean I’ve always been obsessed with germs, and I took microbiology in college, but the fact I started reading these particularly apropos books started less than 2 years up to less than a year before the current pandemic!
- Vaccines: What Everyone Needs to Know by Kristen A. Feemster (finished reading in July 2018)
- Epidemics and Pandemics: Their Impacts on Human History by J. N. Hays (finished reading in July 2018, read my review)
- Viruses: A Very Short Introduction by Dorothy H. Crawford (finished reading in February 2019)
- Epidemiology: A Very Short Introduction by Rodolfo Saracci (finished reading in June 2019)
- Pandemics: A Very Short Introduction by Christian W. McMillen (finished reading in Jun 2019, read my review)
I had a couple more books on my TBR in the microbiology and epidemiology subject field that I wish I’d read before the pandemic which I requested now. It would have been interesting to have all these insights as well.
- Infectious Disease: A Very Short Introduction by Marta L. by Wayne,
- The End of Illness by David Angus
- Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen (I mean?!)
- I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong