Virus Ground Zero

De: Ed Regis

Narrado por: Rob McQuay

An acclaimed science writer takes readers behind the scenes at the Centers for Disease Control to tell the story of an engrossing odyssey across the viral frontier.©1998 Ed Regis (P)2010 Random House

Ed Regis, Regal As Always!

If you want to read a history of the CDC and its epic battle against the virus world, through about 1996, read this book. If you want to read more of, or discover one of America's most informative and entertaining science writers, read this book. If you want a fresh and inside angle on the battle against viruses, read this book. Of course, viruses are no laughing matter, but the entertaining angles include painting virus chasing media like paparazzi, making virus chasing CDC workers look like cowboys going off to Africa to lasso some ebola as a resume builder and describing the CDC bureaucracy spreading like a virus itself!

Other great books by Regis include "Great Mambo Chicken" about wacky cryogenicists, and "The Info Mesa" about the effects of computer simulation on pharmaceutical product development. Of course, since the pub date of "Virus: Ground Zero" in 1998, a lot has happened in the virus world. If you want to read something far more recent on the virus world, I reco "Bad Advice" by Paul Offet,, an epidemiologist prominent enough to appear on CNN many times, for instance. He makes the great distinction between science (a pure ideal) and scientists, who sometimes fall off proscribed ideal methods.

Fantastic listen.

I was actually looking for more of Robert McQuays work and came across this. I really didn’t much about virus’ or the CDC, but after listening to this and of course living through COVID, I now find the subject matter both terrifying and fascinating.

overlong essay

Mr. Regis clearly has a perspective -- that virus are not as much a threat to public safety as the media has hyped them to be, and that the CDC is a overblown bureaucracy. Great, but it's not a book -- it's an essay. There is no interesting scientific information on Viruses -- it feels like a compilation of unedited notes left over from magazine articles. The reader does terrible 'accent voices' for the quotes -- this is annoying.