She knew it sounded odd, but she’d been consumed by this interest since she was a small child. Disease had shaped history; disease had crippled societies—but that’s not why, at the age of seven, she’d become obsessed with it. “It was gruesome death,” she said. “It was the human powerlessness over it. I was interested in horrific disease that swept across huge swaths of the population, who were powerless to stop it, and died these awful deaths.”
