The Fatal Strain: On the Trail of Avian Flu and the Coming Pandemic

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When avian flu began spreading across Asia in the early 2000s, it reawakened fears that had lain dormant for nearly a century. During the outbreak's deadliest years, Alan Sipress chased the virus as it infiltrated remote jungle villages and teeming cities and saw its mysteries elude the world's top scientists. In The Fatal Strain, Sipress details how socioeconomic and political realities in Asia make it the perfect petri dish in which the fast-mutating strain can become easily communicable among humans. Once it ...
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The Fatal Strain: On the Trail of Avian Flu and the Coming Pandemic

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Overview


When avian flu began spreading across Asia in the early 2000s, it reawakened fears that had lain dormant for nearly a century. During the outbreak's deadliest years, Alan Sipress chased the virus as it infiltrated remote jungle villages and teeming cities and saw its mysteries elude the world's top scientists. In The Fatal Strain, Sipress details how socioeconomic and political realities in Asia make it the perfect petri dish in which the fast-mutating strain can become easily communicable among humans. Once it does, the ease and speed of international travel and worldwide economic interdependence could make it as destructive as the flu pandemic of 1918.In his vivid portrayal of the struggle between man and microbe, Sipress gives a front-line view of the accelerating number of near misses across Asia and the terrifying truth that the prospects for this impending health crisis may well be in the hands of cockfighters, live chicken merchants, and witch doctors rather than virologists or the World Health Organization.Like The Hot Zone and The Great Influenza, The Fatal Strain is a fast-moving account that brings the inevitability of an epidemic into a fascinating cultural, scientific, and political narrative.
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Editorial Reviews

David Oshinsky
The bad news, says Alan Sipress in his superb and sobering book about the shadowy progression of a virulent avian flu now moving across Asia, is that the worst is yet to come. Sipress…is uniquely positioned to tell this story. He's intimately familiar with the region, having served as a correspondent in South Asia during the devastating recent tsunami. And his grasp of virology, as well as of the ins and outs of the world health bureaucracy, serves him well in explaining why medical practices that appear so obvious to Western experts in containing a deadly epidemic are largely irrelevant to "the backyard chicken farmers, cockfighters, witch doctors, political bosses, and poultry smugglers" who control the terrain where this battle must be fought.
—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
With the current focus on the H1N1, or swine flu, people may have forgotten about the avian flu scare of a few years ago. The deadly avian, or H5N1, flu centered in Asia and garnered similar headlines in 2004, announcing fears of a pandemic. In his first book, Sipress, a writer for the Washington Post, comes bearing the unhappy news that the avian flu threat grows more dire every day (outbreaks reported as recently as this year). Sipress rides shotgun with WHO researchers as they cross Southeast Asia tracking transmission of the disease and trying to persuade recalcitrant governments to report cases of avian flu and cull flocks of thousands of chickens. Yet possibly infected birds continue to be smuggled across borders, and experts say we are not appropriately prepared to combat a pandemic. Sipress writes at a breathless pace at times, and after a while his case histories blend. Remarkably, he makes no mention of the current H1N1 outbreak. But readers interested in public health or who like to stay abreast of all possible looming threats will want to read this. (Nov. 16)
Kirkus Reviews
A grim, harrowing account of what is happening-and not happening-in Southeast Asia as countries confront bird flu. Former Washington Post business editor and foreign correspondent Sipress spent years following human outbreaks of bird flu in mainland China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia as the disease relentlessly moved west. The culprit was the virulent H5N1 influenza virus, which has ravaged geese, ducks, other wild fowl, the roosters groomed for cockfighting and, most importantly, domestic chickens, transmitting disease to human bird handlers or consumers. Like all flu viruses, H5N1 is quick to mutate or mix genes with other flu viruses, meaning that it can develop resistance to drugs or vaccines. In some places it may have already become asymptomatic in birds, which makes checking the source of a human outbreak, already problematic, even more formidable. The critical question is when a mutation will ease human-to-human transmission. That will be the takeoff point for a pandemic that will dwarf the mortality of the 1918 flu epidemic. The World Health Organization and other global health leaders, as well as the many epidemiologists and virologists tracking the virus, are convinced that it is not question of if but when. The reasons vary: the globalization of commerce and travel means that all parts of the world are connected within hours; a growing middle class in developing countries is eating more meat, and poultry conglomerates have risen to meet the need, in some cases conspiring with governments to suppress news of poultry disease and required bird cullings; developing countries are still too poor to cope with epidemic disease or vaccinations. Some have pledged notto cooperate in disease surveillance, blaming the West for taking their virus samples to make drugs or vaccines that are too expensive for them. There is still much to be learned about the virus, and Sipress's sketches of the heroic men and women at the frontlines enrich the narrative, even as he expertly details the obstacles posed when a disease becomes a matter of politics, commerce and culture clash. Exemplary-and highly frightening-investigative reporting. Author events around Washington, D.C. Agent: Rafe Sagalyn/The Sagalyn Agency
From the Publisher
"[A] superb and sobering book." —-Washington Post
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780670021277
  • Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
  • Publication date: 11/12/2009
  • Pages: 386
  • Product dimensions: 6.40 (w) x 9.28 (h) x 1.31 (d)

Meet the Author


Alan Sipress is a deputy business editor and former foreign correspondent at the Washington Post. In 2005, the Post team that he anchored was awarded the Jesse Laventhol Prize for Deadline Writing for coverage of the South Asian tsunami. He lives in Washington, D.C. George K. Wilson has narrated over one hundred fiction and nonfiction audiobook titles, from Thomas L. Friedman to Thomas Pynchon, and has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. He spent ten years in broadcast news, including for the American Forces Radio and Television Service and for rock radio in San Diego and Los Angeles. An American Academy of Dramatic Arts, West, graduate, his acting career includes stage, film, television, commercials, improvisational comedy, and stand-up. George has written and performed in over five hundred nationally syndicated short news satire features for public radio and NPR and has received a national Corporation for Public Broadcasting Gold Award for Best Public Service Program. He has also scripted and hosted corporate videos for Sony, Merck, IBM, and Price Waterhouse. He is currently working on a suspense short story collection and a thriller novel.
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Sort by: Showing 1 Customer Review

  • Posted January 23, 2010

    The Fatal Strain of Credulity

    It's another "creative" non-fiction sci-fi horror story about killer flu, riddled with factual errors and exaggerated apocalyptic language.
    The biggest untruth in the book is right there in the title: the fatality of bird flu. The author repeats the nonsense that bird flu has an incredibly high fatality rate for those infected. He is confusing exposure, infection and illness. His text ignores the best research available by CDC scientists finding that there is no correlation between H5N1 infection and illness, and indicating that there are probably millions of people in China who have been infected with bird flu without even noticing it.
    For a longer review and more info on flu, you may want to look at www.conflusion.com.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
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