Influenza-Flu Books

Flu: Alternative Treatments And Prevention (Proven Strategies To Protect Yourself And Your Family) by Randall Neustaedter is a little pocketbook offering a complete and thorough understanding of the influenza virus and how to avoid contracting it. As every winter provides reasonable outbreak of the flu, Flu offers readers an understanding of how influenza attacks the body and why it can be deadly, the truth of flu vaccines, effective alternative therapies, and how to prevent or manage the flu at home or with homeopathy, herbs and diet. Now that we are facing "Bird Flue", Randall Neustaedter's Flu is especially timely and highly recommended for all readers concerned with the health of themselves and their family for its comprehensive and complete coverage of exactly what is necessary to in the whole process of flue prevention and treatment.

This is an excellent review of the events that occurred during the spring and fall of 1918 and the subsequent efforts to find out how and why the flu was so devastating. 280 out of every 1000 people got the flu and 40% of those died. A frightening number but if that number is compared to Autism it would be 16.8 of 150 (died of the virus) where Autism would be 1 of 150 (children having the condition). An unfair comparison but the numbers give a modern day perspective on the Flu.
On the whole, a great documentation of history and a limited view of what to expect with the next flu pandemic, which if the 11 year cycle is accurate, will happen in 2012.

In late 1918, World War I is winding down, but America's major cities, like Boston and Philadelphia, are being decimated by Spanish Flu.

The disease hasn't yet reached Columbia, Maryland, where Dr. Alan Keener, fresh out of medical school, treats a young mother named Sarah. She is feeling sick and feverish, classic flu symptoms, for which she is told to go home and rest. Sarah is found dead the next day, her lungs full of fluid.

The local authorities are reluctant to declare a health emergency over one death. They become convinced after the local death toll starts climbing, fast. All indoor gatherings are banned. Church services are moved outside. The local bars and taverns are forcibly closed. People start acting justifiably paranoid, afraid to leave their houses unless absolutely necessary. It becomes personal for Alan when his 5-year-old becomes one of the fatalities, and his wife almost joins her.

A traveling snake-oil salesman gets the flu, and during his flu-induced delirium, he believes that he is visited by an Angel of God. Mankind is being tested; he has been given the name of Kolas, and told to spread the disease as much as possible. Those who don't die are the new Chosen of God. After nearly infecting Alan, Kolas is captured by the police, where he is "encouraged" to give up several samples of blood to be made into a vaccine. It helps to return things back to something approaching normal.

This is a very good, and very easy to read, novel about a famous, yet unknown, bit of 20th Century American history. While reading this book, in your mind, replace all mentions of "Spanish Flu" with "bird flu." Hmmm. . .

As with all Congressional Research Service reports, this one is available for free by writing to your senator or representative.

Reviewed by Linda Benninghoff for Reader Views (4/07)

This compilation of 10 papers deals with people's reactions to a wide variety of disasters, including not only terror and Hurricane Katrina, but child abuse and the trauma suffered by families of service members.

In the 7th paper, "The Dissociation of Abigail," Abigail, a victim of child abuse, is "confronted with aspects of human capacity for malevolent behavior greater than the ability of the mind to comprehend." Perhaps this definition gets at the true nature of terror also. The author speaks of Abigail experiencing cognitive dissonance as opposed to consonance.

Cognitive dissonance is also experienced by the personnel at Abu Ghraib prison. In his essay, "Why Good People Go Bad, A Case Study of the Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse Courts Martial," Alan Hensley discusses the horror of living in Iraq where people are killed on a daily basis and compares the Stanford Prison experiment, where guards began similarly abusing prisoners because of poor conditions there.

These poor prison conditions, including all-female guards being given responsibility for a predominantly male prison population--something intolerable in Arab culture--contributed to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. A situation of cognitive dissonance is created--where the individual cannot comprehend his world and is in disharmony with it.

In "Culture and Ethics in the Eye of the Storm: Engaging Katrina Survivors in Pennsylvania," by Kenneth Glass and Tasha Graves, the authors discuss how the hurricane primarily impacted poor blacks. The author writes: "In my inner psychic world there is the reality that as successful black woman I am guilty of having basked in my feeling of being separate from such uneducated poverty-stricken individuals that happen to share the same race as I." Yet she becomes incensed at the care given the victims of the hurricane and comes to realize her own vulnerability.

Another essay, "Pandemics and Biological/Chemical Terrorism Attacks: A New Role for Disaster Mental Health," by Thom Curtis, looks into the threat of avian influenza as well as chemical attacks. It suggests that mental health professionals can take care of those afflicted with anxiety or psychological disorders because of the threat, to remove the burden from medical personnel coping with the actual outbreak of the disease or the attacks.

Taken together, the papers are fascinating. The "Proceedings of the 5th Rocky Mountain Region Disaster Mental Health Conference" provides insight into the nature of the individual's response to terror and disaster. They should be interesting reading for everyone who either indirectly or directly has been affected.

This informative monograph, directed at the general public, uses anecdotes to illustrate many of the problems associated with the influenza vaccine shortage of 2004.

The first section, tangential to the main topic, describes the 1918 influenza pandemic. The next two sections get back on track by presenting a short history of the development of influenza vaccine followed by a description of current production methods. Regulatory burden has led many manufacturers to withdraw from producing vaccines. By 2004, only three companies were licensed to sell influenza vaccines in the United States.

The author discusses the globalization of vaccine production. Some US-based production facilities are owned by foreign companies, and US companies have production facilities outside our boundaries. This obviously complicates oversight by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On October 5, 2004, the sudden announcement that the Chiron vaccine, which constituted almost half the US supply, would not be available caught US policy makers by complete surprise. The chaos and confusion that followed are well described.

(excerpt from extensive review in JAMA)
W. Paul Glezen, MD
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Tex

Don't bother with this book unless you enjoy being talked down to by a condescending physician. He treats the readers as if they are imbeciles. The quality of the writing and research is abominable, and it is obvious that the author is just trying to make a buck off book sales. If you want the facts about avian influenza, don't read this. You won't find any facts or advice here.

Dr. Marc Siegel's book delivers what has been sorely missing in the discussion of bird flu--a balanced, reasonable, and objective view of this possible threat to our health. Dr. Siegel carefully explains that calls for alarm are not appropriate based on current scientific knowledge and only serve to raise the fear level. At the same time he outlines steps such as upgrading vaccine manufacture and government responsiveness in case a real threat materializes. His basic advice which is to eat smart, exercise, and reduce anxiety, will likely help all of us to live longer. This highly readable and informative book is really "everything you need to know" about this subject.

The spread of a lethal strain of bird flu in the past two years has sparked fears of a new pandemic. In Bird Flu, Dr. Marc Siegel looks through the facts, the fears, and the realities to explain what has the experts so worried and why there's still plenty of reason to be calm. Regardless of whether a bird flu outbreak will occur this year in the United States, there's still plenty of work to be done in preparing America for outbreaks of any kind.

Siegel believes that it is not likely that the bird flu will mutate to human form, and that even if it does, it will be less lethal than currently. In addition, generally unreported evidence from Hong Kong (about 16% of those tested had antibodies to the H5N1 virus) indicates it is less virulent than believed.

Siegel also suggests looking at the downward trend in U.S. flu pandemic deaths - about 500,000 in the 1918 Spanish Flu, 70,000 in the 1957 Asian Flu pandemic, and 34,000 during the 1968 Hong Kong Flu. He attributes this to improved sanitation and the use of pneumonia vaccines (pneumonia causing about half the deaths attributed to flu). Finally, he also points out that cooking poultry kills 100% of the flu virus.

The greatest problem with the avian flu, according to Siegel, is our tendency to panic and over-react. He does not recommend that citizens stockpile Tamiflu because it is expensive, only has about a three-year shelf life, and most citizens would probably waste it because they wouldn't know when to properly use it.

Siegel's "Bottom-Line:" We should be focusing more on the pandemic we already have - AIDS/HIV.

Superb. Dr. Marc Siegel's book "Bird Flu" portrays a concise, realistic and informative outlook on a media bred epidemic: fear and anxiety. Certainly an epidemic from bird flu is possible, I know of no one who disagrees. One, however, needs not confuse the terms possibility with probability. The irrational belief that the bird flu virus has a greater chance of mutating to humans in opposition to the thousands of other viruses currently in existence is unfounded. Certainly we should not remain naïve of such possibilities but we also need to take into consideration the probability of an epidemic from one particular virus that has yet to master the chain of specific mutations it would need in order to become pandemic. Even if this virus mutated to infect humans on a large scale, who is to say that its virility and potential deadly effects would also not alter and wither. If we resort to stockpiling antidotes to this one particular virus, must we then stockpile antidotes for every other potential viral metamorphosis? It is not only impossible to achieve, it is also illogical to think that we should. More research to develop means of developing appropriate vaccines quickly as well as global containment preparedness would be better served. To Dr. Siegel I say "BRAVO" and I hope that you continue educating your readers with such rational approaches.

Awesome book. very well written & informative, well researched. It was recommended to me by an immunologist.

I just finished this book en route from a conference in New Mexico, where I gave a presentation on avian influenza, to my home in Tallahassee.

Mr. Davis' book is superbly footnoted and is an excellent digest of events and publications dealing with "bird flu" over the past nine years. His bashing of the Clinton and Bush (43) administrations aside, his work is a sobering "what if?" that all who deal with pandemic planning should read.

Since the Federal Government has issued pandemic plans covering the Worse Case Scenario, I would suggest two books are essential reading, to get one up to date on things. First, of course, is John M. Barry's superb "The Great Influenza," covering the 1918 pandemic. The other book is this one. After reading this work, you'll never trust Asian flu reporting again.

As a confirming note, a press account today (5/7/06) reported that half the A/H5N1 cases coming out of Asia were reported in a timely enough manner as to be of value in alerting the planet of a human-to-human pandemic. In that context, Mr. Davis' book should be taken even more seriously.

He's kind of into it, isn't he? And that's not even considering the scary picture of the rooster on the front cover of his new book, MONSTER AT THE DOOR. In the 1950s such an illustration might have graced the cover of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, now here it is advertising, or promoting an ostensibly serious document with a little bit of scare quotes going on.

Another reviewer for Amazon praises Mike Davis for his mountains of research. That's all very well, but in the six months since the publication of this book medicine and medical technology has altered dramatically and I find these citations nearly useless for constructing a response to the threat. The sad thing is that at this stage of the game the internet can probably tell you more than a book, with its finite "endgame" of a 2005 publication date. We must know more about avian flu and the men, women, and children who have already come down with this devastating, and supercontagious disease.

Davis names names, calling the governments of Thailand, Indonesia and China "super deceivers" for their attempts to quell debate and to cover up the extent of the illness. It was not merely millions of chickens and porcine family mammals who lay wasted by the AF, it was millions of people, Thais, Chinese, everyone who had anything to do with these infected birds. You could see them gasping for air and raising a withered hand, then the air went out of them and they collapsed into death. Mike Davis doesn't have all the answers, but he's on the trail of the right questions. Most of all, in our global economy, who profits by this death? Who profits from the intentional slowdown of vaccine production? He compares the way poor Africans are suffering from AIDS and views the lack of response on the part of "world public health" as a template for what's going to happen here. If they can ignore the deaths of billions of Africans, what's going to happen when a virus much more easily spread hits the airwaves like some sort of Stephen King like fever dream?

This book is a comprehensive look at just what bird (or avian) flu is all about, and what the world is, or is not, doing about it.

Influenzas are divided into three major categories. Types B & C are relatively mild, leading to the common cold, or, at worst, the winter flu. But Type A is the unpredictable, and lethal, strain that is fully entrenched among the bird population of East Asia. It is very easy for the disease to jump from migratory birds, to ducks, to chickens, to swans and egrets, and back again, mutating along the way. Until now, the human deaths have come from direct contact with infected birds. But the time is coming when that last mutation will click into place, causing it to jump from person to person. A worldwide flu pandemic, with a death toll in the hundreds of millions, is, as one researcher put it, "late."

What is America doing to prepare for the coming pandemic? Not much. Industrial chicken farms, with millions of chickens crowded into one building, are a wonderful breeding ground for diseases of all sorts, not just bird flu. Remember SARS from a couple of years ago? Among the reasons why it was contained is that the cities where it happened, Toronto and Hong Kong, are modern cities with modern health care systems. Imagine if SARS had shown up somewhere in Africa, with a much less modern health care system.

The major drug companies have opposed moves to allow other countries to make cheap copies of flu vaccines, even though there are nowhere near enough doses of vaccines even for first responders, out of concern for their corporate bottom line. The Bush Administration is more interested in spending money preparing for a smallpox or anthrax outbreak, something which has much less chance of ever happening, than in spending it on bird flu, which is coming in the near future.

This is a very spooky book, which I guess is the idea. It is written for the layman, and does a fine job at showing how unprepared America is for the next flu pandemic. It is very highly recommended.

The free market approach to procuring vaccine when signs of epidemics of Influenza A arise has been disastrous, Davis shows. In the U.S. epidemics in 1957 and 1968, companies could not manufacture enough vaccine in time to prevent it from spreading and killing tens of thousands of elderly people, pregnant women, etc. Vaccines for infectious diseases are very unprofitable for pharmaceutical companies to manufacture. The need for flu vaccine is uncertain and seasonal. And the flu mutates and reasserts into new forms that make a previous season's vaccine obsolete so the companies get left with a worthless stockpile. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt recently bragged that he had set up a contract with Sanofi Pasteur to procure new production lines for cell-based vaccines. The head of the Centers for Disease Control Julie Gerberding, much disliked amongst her employees for being a political operative of the Bush administration, in contrast, acknowledged that vaccines become obsolete after one season, that the production lines being set up by Sanofi Pasteur were limited and also that the doses puchased were more adequate for common cold/flu. Leavitt, also dodged questions about the relatively tiny purchases compared to those made by other countries, of Tamiflu, the one drug that can inhibit the explosion of Avian flu in the body after it has gotten set up in the body.

Currently the U.S. has two companies under contract to produce flu vaccine. One of them is the San Francisco based Chiron. FDA officials i.e. appointees of the Bush administration, waited nine months before sending the inspector's report to Chiron officials about finding many sources of potential contamination in its production and then assured congress that the company was working on the problem. Then in July 2004, Chiron discovered massive doses of bacteria that can cause death from septic shock, just as it was bragging in a press release that it had shipped one million doses of Fluviron vaccine to the U.S and planned to ship 52 million more doses. Chiron waited a month to tell the FDA. FDA acting head Lester Patterson and company officials assured congress everything was fine but shortly after those assurances, British inspectors closed their planned and withdrew their license to manufacture vaccines.

Devastatingly he notes how the Bush administration has used the scare over anthrax, which seems to have come not from Muslim terrorists or Saddam, but from Fort Detrick Maryland, to ramp up funding for vaccines against the very remote possibility of smallpox or anthrax transmission by terrorists. At the same time Bush has slashed funds for public health protection against infectious diseases like the evolving strains of Avian flu. They are, of course, only following the course set by the Reagan administration. Rates of infectious disease among poorer Americans have increased since the cuts of the Reagan years, weakening immune systems and thus giving diseases like Avian flu and SARS an easier pathway. Neither Democratic nor Republic politicians, both heavily funded by Pharmaceuticals, have been willing to even timidly suggest that the patent rights of the flu vaccine manufacturers should be violated and governments should be able to produce their own generic version of vaccines. Maintaining the level of Pharmaceutical company profits, the most profitable industry in the world is more important than slightly cutting into those profits by allowing governments to produce their own generic version of Tamiflu (a proposal which the U.S. and France blocked at a WHO conference in 2002) to say nothing of producing drugs to combat Malaria and reduce AIDS deaths in Africa (also blocked by the U.S.). . He notes how AIDs must have got started. Fisherman in West Africa could not longer compete in procuring fish for protein and commerce as their governments lifted restrictions on corporate foreign fishing on their shores. Meanwhile, West Africa's previously isolated rain forests were logged over and exposedtheir pathogens to the rest of the world, particularly through their animals which many Africans turned to as a source of protein in lieu of the fish.

Government spending on public health in third world has been dramatically slashed in the third world as governments are compelled to undergo IMF (i.e. U.S.) imposed structural adjustment so government preparedness in these countries for public health disasters is even worse than before. He mentions the Indian government's response to a Pneumonic Plague outbreak in the slums of Suratt, where there is one toilet for every 250 persons. The rapidly expanding slums of the third world are extremely dangerous for spreading disease as are the crowded conditions among sweatshop laborers in China's poultry center, Guangdong province, who suffer from pollution related respiratory disease and cacner.

In the United States and in Thailand and the rest of Asia, mass chicken farms tens of thousands of chickens co-exist with other poultry, wildfowl and human beings and thus Avian flu has the chance to go through many different hosts and evolve. One chicken farm in Utah produces more excrement than the entire city of Los Angeles. In 2000-01, chicken farms in the Tilgore valley in Californian and in British Colombia both covered up the spread of Avian flu among their fowl.

Davis describes how the Thai poultry conglomerate CP, in collusion with the Thai govt., bribed its sources of chickens to keep quiet while its workers at its processing plants were unknowingly exposed as they prepared to export the chicken. The Thai government blamed small scale chicken producers who are very poor backyard producers and went around butchering all their chickens while offering them terms for compensation which they could almost never abide by.. The CP has been blamed for one particular Avian flu outbreak at one of its open air poultry farms in Vietnam. CP apparently sent campaign donations to Clinton through John Huang in the scandal that got right wingers all excited. One insightful thinker at the Weekly Standard tried to tie CP and its close connections with China as a Commie front company that was influencing Clinton. . Of course, Davis points out, CP actually has had strong business relations with Bush Sr. and Neil Bush and the Carlyle group.

Dr. Woodson has shown keen insight last year in foreseeing the likely conditions that would prevent most people suffering from an influenza pandemic from obtaining treatment at overcrowded hospitals. Now the Federal and State governments openly admit as much.

The techniques and procedures contained within this book describe how to treat a family member who has contracted a highly pathogenic influenza, such as H5N1. While the severest cases still need hospitalization, the vast majority of other cases can be treated at home if one follows the carefully spelled out therapy Dr. Woodson has communicated in layman's terms. I loaned this book to my physician who called back two days later to confirm the soundness of the treatment plan. Interestingly enough, the book only costs $5, but the information within makes it worth its weight in gold.

this extremely alarmist manual does not offer practical suggestions, but a ritualistic rule of worry that will instill doomsday panic in anyone who tries to follow it. Shame on a practicing physician for coming up with such nonsense.

The "Bird Flu Preparedness Planner" delivers what it promises in a clear, compelling, straight-forward way. Dr. Woodsen lays out the facts of this health threat with no hype and no panic. However, it is real, it is deadly, and it is heading our way.

The most valuable feature of this slim, easy-to-read manual, is its simplicity and practicality for preparedness. It has checklists of supplies, medicines, and food a family would need in case of a severe epidemic or pandemic. I will try to get Tamiflu (to help with ordinary strains of influenza) and the over-the-counter remedies he recommends.

I think the food list could have been a bit more comprehensive. I plan to have more than rice and potatoes on hand to feed a family of six for eight weeks. However my grocery list looks more like a summer cookout for a family reunion than an emergency stash. I suppose 8 cases of baked beans and 8 summer sausages is a little over-the-top.

Like many Americans, all I knew about bird flu was what I got from headlines, and that information was very basic and not helpful as far as forming a plan of action. This book was different. While less than 100 pages, and some of those diagrams, there is no effort on the part of the author to impress (or boggle) your mind with fancy words. He speaks at a level that normal people can understand, and I feel more educated about this flu issue than in the past. He helped me understand what an epidemic means (not just the Webster definition) as in, how many people get sick, and what we might face. I hadn't considered how it might affect me if a sizable part of the nation got sick all at once (even if I remained untouched, there's still consequences).

Pros - Not complicated medical lingo (skips why the viral RNA has potential to mutate and therefore cross
from birds to humans because of gene marker...) Just what the common person needs to know
- Not an overly long book (not too much to remember all at once)
- Small enough to fit in your coat pocket to read little bits at a time
- Instruction is simple, in an even tone, not panicky
_ Recommendation of "The Great Influenza" was a good one, borrowed it from the library. You probably
won't find "the Bird Flu Preparedness Planner" in your library

Cons - Well, I wish I knew more, and I want some details, especially on how I can take steps on my own to deal
with this when it hits.
- $5 seems like a sum for a small book...

Overall: This book is straight-to-the-point, simple info on what a flu epidemic could be like. I think he hit his goal with getting the basic info out to the masses (this book just needs to move more) in a timely fashion (this was published for 2005) so that if the flu came, at least SOME info would be out there. He has written a second one, "Bird Flu Manual" which I have purchased but not read yet. I think it will fall to me to be the bird flu 'expert' in our family, so I am trying to educate myself. Emails don't count. I always put more stock in a bonafide published work that the author could be hung out to dry on if he writes fluff. Emails are anonymous, and forwards could be written by anyone. Zero authority.

Buy this, read it, get it to someone else. I gave my copy to my father, as he is also interested.

Grattan Woodson wrote the brief book, "The Bird Flu Preparedness Planner," ". . .to prepare his patients for a possible catastrophic event. . ." (page 83). The book, as the title suggests, is a nuts and bolts volume, giving readers a brief introduction to avian flu (with a focus on H5N1) and how to deal with it if a pandemic breaks out.

There are introductory chapters about the nature of avian flu and why it could be so destructive of human life. The chapter beginning on page 21 is where this becomes a useful "how to do it" manual. This looks at "pre-pandemic" preparations, including preparing stockpiles of medicines and supplies that one might need if pandemic strikes. There is also am listing of nonperishable foodstuffs that are worth collecting beforehand.

The chapter beginning on page 41 speaks of home flu treatment advice. The author notes that one of the single most important pieces of advice is to (page 41): ". . .make sure [people] have plenty of fluids. Dehydration must be prevented, as this can be fatal in a patient who would otherwise survive." Diet recommendations for those afflicted with flu are enumerated as well.

One of the more sobering presentations in this book is a set of maps showing how rapidly that the 1918 pandemic swept across the United States. From a small outbreak in mid-September, we see the entire country infected by October 13th.

For those interested in a brief introduction as to what one might do to prepare, this is a useful volume. Of course, the brevity is also a problem if one wants much more detail. But if what one wants is "quick, dirty, and brief," this is a volume worth looking at.

This is a wonderful book. It has only 90 some pages and you can read through it fast. The book brakes down this flu first by explaining what it is on the molecular level. Then it gives six scenarios of what the experts think might happen. The book talks about medications and natural foods that might help you to fight against the flu if you contract it. The book discusses the 1918 flu and other flues that have attacked in the last 100 years. Last and most important it give you a list of items you should stock up. If and when this does becomes dangerous for people many items will be gone from store shelves in a matter of just a few hours. The book in no way uses scare tactics but just presents you with the facts and informs you of what the experts see as the potentially dangerous outcome of this H5N1 bird flu.

Great book small and organized, 6 Chapters. A few ilustrations. A great list of FOODS FOR AN EMERGENCY and EMERGENCY SUPPLIES. Super section on alternative treatments that I didn't see anywhere. I liked the way they interviewed Dr. Fauci (who has been on TV alot) and Dr Tabenburger (the guy who discovered the DNA of the 1918 virus) to include their opinions. Wasn't crazy about the cover-seems a little extreme. Overall, since I live in an area that is probably the first place birds will arrive in this country (and a long way from traditional medicals).

This is a relatively easy book to read and doesn't get bogged down in too much "technical detail." I've read two other books about the flu and one about the international epidemic in WWI. While those books were generally historical, this one is practical and actually addresses things we can do if the flu gets over here. It's worth the time and money to read.

My mother asked me to buy this book for her, and she has not slept since and I wish I read it first. She is upset because bird flu is a worrying possibility, yes, but also because this book writes about it in a way that is designed to make you think, o dear what if the neighbors infect me? how would i save myself, if other people were suffering? It is a bad state of mind, to think of your self when the whole community is badly sick. This book remind me of those men who go to remote deserts and dig fallout shelters and hide there with guns and canned soup. It sounds too excited about the possibility of everybody else dying and being horribly dangerous to you like a zombie film, even though it is written by doctors who should be wise and not selling to people's selfishness and fear. My mother keeps crying in the night and she needs comfort and shame on them.

This is a pretty straightforward treatment of the potential Avian Flu Pandemic that contains some useful information and insights from an M.D. I didn't give it 5 stars since much of the information can be found in the public domain at the CDC and WHO websites. In addition, the very nature of the Avian Flu story lends itself to quick developments which quickly date a book of this nature.

These minor criticisms aside, I appreciated the author's discussion of conventional flu treatments and possible alternative remedies. He also included a list of items that you should consider storing in anticipation of a panic, if the virus goes pandemic. I didn't think the book was over the top in terms of trying to frighten people. This is a frightening topic, but the author presented a range of possible scenarios from the mundane to the apocalyptic. You can either allow yourself to be scared silly, or you can take the information available, make your own plan and rest easy. Knowledge kills fear.