If you are already of the hyper-conscious sort who is happy to wash their hands until they bleed even when there isn’t a pandemic, this book will not comfort you. I thought, naively, that I would feel more knowledgeable and therefore feel more confident and in control of this whole covid thing (after all, isn’t knowledge power?) but alas, I now feel only justified in my life choices. The only change is that now I am terrified of chicken. Seriously, how is any of that chicken shit legal? In the words of my darling younger sister, “who let you read that!?” 5/5 would recommend except to my older sister [Allison seriously let me bear this burden for us]. ( )

Dr. Greger has adapted one of his earlier books and added new material, especially in this book's voluminous appendices. If you want the truth about how the global industrial raising of all farmed animals exponentially raises our 21st century risk for a) a much longer COVID-19 pandemic, and b) many more, likely concurrent, 21st century pandemics, then this book is an essential read.

Looking back thru US history, all US presidents since World War I have contributed to the extreme vulnerability of the USA to pandemic risk. Laurie Garrett's 1990s book The Coming Plague has the best historical analysis of that trend. Many US public health professors, disease researchers and epidemiologists have warned US politicians, mostly in vain, about our increasing pandemic risks. Lest you think I am a biased liberal, in my opinion the most thoughtful response to these US presidential pandemic briefings was from President George W. Bush, who began some important new reforms. My pandemic focus is on the needed US and global public health steps, not on politics, where there's plenty of blame to be shared everywhere anyway.

Those who read this best-seller will find many reasons to adopt a plant-based diet sooner rather than later. Example: A plant-based diet greatly strengthens the human immune system. For further reading, I recommend The Fatal Strain, by Washington Post reporter Alan Sipress. The subject of The Fatal Strain is influenza pandemics, which is caused by a different family of viruses (the influenza family) than is COVID-19 (which stems from the coronavirus family), but the pandemic risk is horrifyingly almost the same. I also recommend the forthcoming (October 2022) title from US science writer David Quammen; his book Breathless is about the SARS-CoV-2 virus. ( )

The author already had a book about industrial chicken farming, added a chapter about Covid-19 and changed the title. Very clever way of getting people to read his criticism of chicken farming which few people would want to read otherwise. ( )