The Invisible Siege Audiobook Libro.fm

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A journey into the origins of COVID19 and the discovery of vaccines and potential cures I learned so much that I didnt know beforeabove all I met the subtle warriors of the laboratory who are working to save all of us from the horror of new pandemicsRichard Preston bestselling author of The Hot Zone and The Demon in the Freezer

Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers Trust Prize One of Publishers Weeklys top ten science books of the season

The urgency of the devastating COVID19 pandemic has fixed humanitys gaze on the present crisis But the story of this pandemic extends far further back than many realize In this engrossing narrative epidemiologist Dan Werb traces the rising threat of the coronavirus family and the attempts by a small group of scientists who worked for decades to stop a looming viral pandemic

When virologist Ralph Baric began researching coronaviruses in the 1980s the field was a scientific backwaterthe few variants that infected humans caused little more than the common cold But when a novel coronavirus sparked the 2003 SARS epidemic and then the MERS epidemic a decade later Baric and his allies realized that time was running out before a pandemic strain would make the inevitable jump from animals to human hosts

In The Invisible Siege Werb unpacks the dynamic history and microscopic complexity of an organism that has wreaked cycles of havoc upon the world for millennia Elegantly tracing decades of scientific investigation Werbs book reveals how Barics team of scientists hatched an audacious plan not merely to battle COVID19 but to end pandemics forever Yet as they raced to find a cure they ran into a complicated nexus of science ethics industry and politics that threatened to derail their efforts just as COVID19 loomed ever larger

The Invisible Siege is an urgent and moving testament to the unprecedented scientific movement to stop COVID19and a powerful look at the infuriating factors that threaten to derail discovery and leave the world vulnerable to the inevitable coronaviruses to come