3.25 ( )

This was better than fiction! There was suspense, intrigue, politics, deceit, and hope. ( )

Interesting story of how bubonic plague got established in California. Perhaps a bit long-winded, with the character setups not entirely paying off. Lots of parallels to modern America.

> Chinese residents—possibly with the assistance of Western-trained doctors familiar with the methods of bacteriology—appeared to be hiding victim’s bodies in hopes that the decomposition process would obscure the true cause of death,

> the press refused to admit the danger that San Francisco was in. “We do not believe that a single person has ever died of bubonic plague in this city,” the Chronicle wrote in an editorial after the body of the fourth plague victim was found

> Developed by Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, a Ukrainian scientist who, like Kinyoun, had once studied with Louis Pasteur, the so-called Haffkine serum had been developed by growing plague cells taken from cadavers and subjecting them to high heat in order to kill their ability to multiply. After potential patients in several villages refused to receive any serum that included plague germs, the first tests had been conducted on a group of prisoners in Bombay three years before. The serum was shown to reduce the risk of infection by half. Yet its side effects—high fever, violent vomiting, and a deep but temporary reddening of the skin—would leave its recipients incapacitated for two days at least, and required additional injections every six months to remain effective.

> coming at a time when distrust of compulsory smallpox vaccinations spurred Americans of all ethnicities to pull their children from public schools, most Chinese in San Francisco saw the Haffkine serum as ineffective at best and suspected that it was actually a plan to poison them. Tongs threatened to harm anyone who submitted to the vaccine

> the most common flea in the city was the Northern European species, Ceratophyllus fasciatus, rather than Pulex cheposis, which was the most prevalent in plague-infested ports such as Hong Kong and Bombay. … The main difference between the two species is in the layout of their guts: the Indian rat flea has a spiny ridge in its abdomen where blood from its most recent meal collects, eventually blocking material from reaching the stomach. That clot leads the famished insect to aggressively bite any living mammal that it encounters. … The European flea, by comparison, retains less blood in its stomach, leaving it less likely to develop a blockage that prompts it to attack as aggressively. When it does bite, the flea deposits only a fraction of its stomach material into the body of its new host, minimizing its ability to spread infection compared with its more ravenous Asian cousin ( )

I mostly enjoyed this accounting of the arrival the Bubonic Plague in America, and though it came out before the rise of COVID, it shows that some things don't change; the wishful thinking of the American business community, the inclination to blame a medical issue on an unpopular ethnic or social group, the easy descent into politically motivated thuggery, etc. Maybe the one point that I really have an issue with is the subtitle, as the effort to make sure the disease did not become a problem was never a "race;" it was mostly a long-haul exercise in comprehending the issue. Fortunately, the natural history of North America contributed to keeping the Plague in check enough to allow effective measures to be taken. ( )

I wanted to like this book more, just did not stir me like I want a good non-fiction book to do.

This is the history of The Black Plague scare in San Francisco in the early 1900's. The author gives us the story behind all the politics and prejudice of the time. It was fascinating to compare what happened then as to what we have been through with Covid over the last year. Not much has changed, sadly. Politicians an big business manipulating facts and science to their own ends, Lies and rumors smothering the actual facts. Then there was the racist discrimination against the Chinese population, and how the disease was their fault. Sound familiar? I could hear Trump in my head "China, China, China"-

An interesting story, just wish it would have captured me a little bit more. ( )