The End of October

by Lawrence Wright

Disease was more powerful than armies. Disease was more arbitrary than terrorism. Disease was crueler than human imagination. And yet young people like these doctors were willing to stand in the way of the most fatal force that nature has to offer.

According to their calculations, more than 800 million viruses were deposited every day on every single meter of the earth’s surface. Most of these viruses preyed on bacteria, not humans. The total number of viruses on the planet was estimated to be a hundred million times more than the number of stars in the universe.

The president had been almost entirely absent in the debate about how to deal with the contagion, except to blame the opposing party for ignoring public health needs before he took office.