Five books of science and history that cast light on covid-19 | Books and arts - The Economist

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From the pestilence in London in 1665 to the Spanish flu and beyond by The Economist.

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The Spanish flu pandemic that began in 1918 killed around 50m people in a few years—more deaths than in the preceding four years of world war. Young adults seemed to perish disproportionately from what was an especially virulent strain of the influenza virus. Doctors could do very little about the sickness, so countries closed their borders and blamed each other. This book tells the story not only of the devastation at the time, but also of the century of scientific detective-work that was required to understand why the episode was so deadly.

Some of the outbreaks of disease that have caused most distress among human beings have come from animals. Other, non-human primates were the source of HIV; influenza transferred from birds, and coronaviruses from bats. When the human immune system is newly confronted with something that has just hopped the species barrier—a so-called zoonosis—it can be overwhelmed. By tracking the origin of several zoonoses, this book explains how such diseases emerge, why they are so dangerous and where in the world the next ones might arise. 
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Source: The Economist