Catching Cold

by Pete Davies

Book by Davies

Genres: Nonfiction, History

Hardcover

First published August 5, 1999

About the author

Pete Davies is best known as the author of All Played Out, the classic account of the Italian World Cup in 1990 that's been continuously in print ever since it hit the bestseller list. He's also the author of three novels, and eight other works of non-fiction.

Davies has written about sport and politics, history and science, travel and weather. He's flown in hurricanes over the Gulf of Mexico and off the Carolinas, chased tornadoes on the Great Plains, and followed stories around the world from Central America to East Africa, from India to Japan, from Hong Kong to the high Arctic.

Davies was born in 1959 and lives in West Yorkshire, England. He was prolifically productive in the 1990's, but after American Road came out in 2002, he disappeared from view. In deteriorating health, he was told in 2006 that he had two years left to live.

Davies defied that diagnosis, and in 2017 - after fifteen years of silence - he published his novel Playlist. A wildly inventive comedy, Playlist marks a stunning and unexpected return to print for one of the most original voices of his generation.

Reviews

[Elentarri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Catching Cold by Pete Davies
Date read: 30 April 2024
Rating: 3 stars

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Blurb: "In 1997 the death of a young boy from the flu virus in Hong Kong provoked such alarm among experts that over one and a half million chickens - the animals acting as hosts to an unfamiliar strain of the disease - were slaughtered to prevent it spreading. The concern was understandable; in 1918 a mutant variety of the illness killed roughly forty million people worldwide. Catching Cold is the terrifying story of a plague from our recent past, of the small band of scientists trying to understand it and of their certainty that, unless they succeed, its return is just a matter of time."
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This book was published in 1999, so a bit outdated 20+ years later.  However, it does provide an interesting, if somewhat muddled, account of the hunt for the 1918 "Spanish" flu virus and how scientists determined which strain of flu it was.  Davies begins with the 1997 Hong Kong bird flu outbreak and bounces back and forth between this, the 1918 flu pandemic, with passing mentions of the Asian flu pandemic (1957-58) and Hong Kong flu pandemic (1968-69). 

I did feel that the narrative of searching for the flu virus and its analysis was buried under all the mini-obituary examples of all the dead that were included all over the place, not to mention the bouncing around between pandemics, and the somewhat repetitive interviews with various people.  On the other hand, reading about the two very different expeditions to exhume the (hopefully) intact and frozen remains of 1918 flu victims was fascinating: one very expensive (approximately half a million Pounds), not terribly successful and lengthy expedition with many members (+media) to Spitzbergen; compared to the successful and relatively cheap ($3000) one man (with a spade) expedition to Alaska. Also interesting, was the use of old stored and preserved samples, and the development of techniques to isolate tiny, fragmented DNA/RNA particles.

The author keeps mentioning that the 1918 flu pandemic has been forgotten. I suppose this depends on where you live because that pandemic is part of World War I history and is mentioned whenever WWI comes up, so hardly forgotten.

Interesting, but flawed.  And really needs an update to include the 2009 Swine flu pandemic, and whatever else comes after.

[Julie Furnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting book about the sequencing of the 1918 flu virus and how they found out which strain it was - the difference between a half million pound expedition to Spitzbergen vs one man with $3000 and a spade basically. Also covers the 'next pandemic' - as this book was written in the late 1990s so before Covid reared its ugly head it almost seems quaint. However, I still think it serves as a warning as to what a deadly pathogenic flu can do and how unprepared we are (as shown by Covid). Perhaps we should see Covid as a dress rehearsal for the next one...

[Wendy Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interweaving the Hong Kong bird flu outbreak with the devastation of the 1918 flu pandemic and the modern scientific search for the exact strain that caused it, this is a fascinating read (a great companion to Doomsday Book by Connie Willis) that sorely needs an update 10 years on with the recent scare.

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

an intellectually dishonest talk about a story sold as ”forgotten”, although it constantly pops on tv. maybe there's some value in here.

[Catherine Morrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an insane start to the year, but it was like just fifty pages too long. A lot of the science parts still held true, despite it being published in 1999, which is equally depressing and impressive.

[Steve Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight into the world of flu and the almost impossible task that science has in preventing pandemics occurring.

[Leanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only gave this book three stars last time, but I enjoyed it a lot more reading it a second time. It's a pretty interesting story - I think why I marked it down last time was that I really wanted to hear more about the 1918 pandemic - there is quite a lot about that, but I wanted more! But this is a great history of influenza in general. I think if I knew upfront that it wasn't specifically about the pandemic that would have helped - totally my fault, not the author's. Great book - detailed and informative.

[Jody Nicholson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Couple of chapters a little dull, but most of the book reads like a horror story... crazy to think it is/was real life.