Mark Honigsbaum is a medical historian, journalist, and author of five books including "The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris."
In the book, Honigsbaum narrates the last century of scientific struggle against the enemy we face today: deadly contagious disease. He would argue that our current crisis is representative of the cycle of neglect that has characterized our responses to epidemics and pandemics over the last 100 years.
Today’s situation contains uncanny parallels with 1918’s Spanish flu pandemic, not least in the virus’s stealthy, silent spread around the world, before erupting suddenly in multiple urban centers at the same time.
