social distancing

How to Survive a Pandemic

by Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM  · 1,072pp  · 237,186 words

Men Against the Sea Millions around the world may die in the COVID-19 pandemic.137 In the United States, a “best guess” estimate presented to the American Hospital Association was about a half a million American deaths.138 With sufficient social distancing, however, that may be reduced to under a hundred thousand.139

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of events from occurring in the first place? We need to give these animals more breathing room. They’re the ones who could use some social distancing. To lower our risk of generating increasingly dangerous farmed animal flu viruses, the global meat and egg industries must reverse course away from greater intensification

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hosts. Once such measures are relaxed, though, the disease could come roaring back.2694 In the pandemic of 1918, for example, some U.S. cities experienced a second peak in mortality following the lifting of social-distancing measures.2695 By periodically pressing the brake with flattening-the-curve strategies like shelter-in-place

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mucous membranes, meaning our eyes or the inside of our nose or mouth. Once the pandemic is more under control, ample testing is in place, and the health-care system is no longer overrun, these social distancing precautions may start to be relaxed at least for less vulnerable individuals.2806 You can’t

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considered “a big mistake.”2893 The U.S. CDC relented on April 3, 2020, and recommended “wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain,” such as at grocery stores or pharmacies.2894 The 180-degree shift is probably best exemplified by the U.S

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is necessary, expressing concern that it might lead to a false sense of security and neglect of more important measures, such as hand hygiene and social distancing.2901 On the other hand, one could imagine how wearing a mask might prompt people to avoid touching their faces. Gloves could play a similar

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an early R0 estimate from Spain that was closer to 5).2940 This is why it’s so important to enact curve-flattening measures like social distancing to reduce the number of contacts and drive down the basic reproduction number as low as possible. We don’t want to have to wait

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able to protect them from reinfection.2943 At the rate immunity wanes to the common cold coronaviruses, a Harvard modeling group suggested prolonged or intermittent social distancing may need to be maintained into 2022.2944 Unlike HIV, which keeps parts of itself hidden to evade the immune system and establish a long

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[antiviral] drugs, there’s not really much we can do to prepare.”2954 That’s hardly true. We know from the COVID-19 pandemic we can still practice defensive strategies, such as social distancing, respiratory etiquette, and other hygiene measures like hand sanitization. No one just comes down with the flu. You catch the

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does this other half live? How can you better the odds that you’ll fall into the lucky half? Social distancing has been described as avoiding any “unnecessary contact of people.”2956 Since COVID-19 and influenza are communicable diseases spread from one person to the next, it makes sense that the fewer

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people you come in contact with, the fewer chances you have of catching it. On a personal level, social distancing means staying in one’s home, not

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city in Nigeria was infected by fewer than ten persons.2986 Social distancing, taken to its logical extreme, would mean total isolation from the outside world. True, becoming a hermit living in a cave would presumably preclude one from dying during the pandemic, but this is easier said than done. No man is

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are that at least a quarter of Americans will be infected [and fall ill] in a pandemic flu.”3007 America’s purple mountain majesties cannot fit 330 million people. Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases Practicing social distancing techniques not only protects you from the crowds, it protects the crowds from you. If one

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from recently reported deaths. medRxiv.org. [accessed 2020 Apr 1]. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033761. 2806. Stein R. 2020. COVID-19 and rationally layered social distancing. Int J Clin Pract. 14:e13501. [Epub ahead of print 2020 Mar 14; accessed 2020 Apr 1]. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcp

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, October 11. www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/louv/20051011-9999-lz1e11louv.html. 3008. GlobalSecurity.org. 2005. Flu pandemic mitigation-social distancing. www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/hsc-scen-3_flu-pandemic-distancing.htm. 3009. Monroe JA. 2005. Pandemic influenza plan. Indiana State Department of Health. www.in.gov/isdh/pdf.s/PandemicInfluenzaPlan.pdf. 3010. Connolly

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic

by Bill Gates  · 2 May 2022  · 406pp  · 88,977 words

family, are particularly dangerous because they can spread so quickly. A notice from the U.S. government encouraging proper hygiene and social distancing during the 1918 influenza pandemic. And the odds that a pandemic will strike are only going up. That’s partly because, with urbanization, humans are invading natural habitats at a growing

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outbreak, that might be your first choice for staying safe. But when it comes to preventing COVID, if you have to choose between spending time and money on cleaning things or improving airflow, improve the airflow. Social distancing works, but there’s nothing magical about six feet. I’ve lost count of how

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of the National Academy of Sciences (Oct. 2021): 118. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT One ingenious study used: Joakim A. Weill et al., “Social Distancing Responses to COVID-19 Emergency Declarations Strongly Differentiated by Income,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Aug. 2020): 19658–60

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, 239, 240 Seattle area as home, 66, 180–81 social distancing and twenty-eight tennis balls, 104, 104 in South Africa, 4 TED talk: “The Next Epidemic? We’re Not Ready,” 13, 14, 71 Vietnam visit, 170 virtual meetings and, 241, 243 wealth and COVID, 17 working dinners and, 4 World’s Fair

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, hand-washing, 100–101, 103 sheltering in place, 80, 87, 99 social distancing, 95, 104, 104–5 St. Louis’s policies, 86–87 stopping public gatherings, 86–87 travel bans, 19, 89, 233, 234, 253 Norway COVID among children and, 92 COVID NPIs in, 88 funding low-income countries health care, 228, 232 Gates

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.’s Dark Winter and Atlantic Storm tabletop exercises, 185–86 vaccine development, 158 Smil, Vaclav, 239 social distancing, 95, 104, 104–5 South Africa, 4 clinical trials and, 208 COVID vaccination rate, 198 COVID vaccine studies, 31 COVID variants in, 76, 89, 206 HIV and TB testing and genetic analysis, 70, 76 HIV prevention, 70

Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order

by Colin Kahl and Thomas Wright  · 23 Aug 2021  · 652pp  · 172,428 words

a major role in its spreading. Millions of workers flocked to factories and cities, where inadequate housing forced them into tight quarters. Under these conditions, social distancing was an impossibility. Meanwhile, millions of other young men were crammed into military training camps, barracks, and trains, spreading the virus in their ranks and

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recognition cameras adjusted to identify individuals even when they wore a face mask. At the same time, given its population density, China struggled to implement social distancing in classrooms or workplaces.37 The images from Wuhan stunned the Chinese people. On social media, people vented their anger at the government cover-up

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businesses and the American public on how best to contain the outbreak. It sought to edit the CDC’s findings and recommendations, which included eliminating social distancing restrictions on religious services, reducing them for bars and restaurants, and delaying an order to ban cruise ships from setting sail. The White House eventually

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the nation fifteen days to slow the spread. This included asking Americans to stay at home, avoid gatherings of more than ten people, and practice social distancing. Trump’s advisors knew it would not be enough, but it was all they could get. They would ask for, and receive, an extension

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Trump administration embedded a negative image of America around the world. There was no U.S. national strategy. Nor was there a consistent message around social distancing or mask wearing. Key agencies, such as the CDC, were micromanaged and muzzled by the White House. Authorities at both the federal and state levels

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—a move praised by the WHO as an act of international solidarity (even though masks were not worn as the passengers were welcomed onshore and social distancing was not observed). At least one passenger later traveled to Malaysia, where she developed symptoms and tested positive. The Diamond Princess debacle did have

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. As a result, Japan’s COVID response was highly normative—people complied because it was the right thing to do and because their neighbors were complying. During the initial months of the pandemic, in-person social interaction dropped 70–80 percent as people strictly followed the government’s social distancing recommendations. On May 26

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were detected—were more effective in containing initial COVID-19 outbreaks. This included implementing testing, tracing, and isolation procedures. It meant encouraging masking and hand hygiene. And it entailed imposing border and travel restrictions, limitations on public gatherings, school and workplace closures, and other social distancing requirements. In contrast, where the pace of

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to execute their pandemic response and provide relief to quarantined citizens. Countries lacking these advantages had a much harder time. As we will see in Chapter 8, many low- and middle-income countries struggled even when they acted early because their testing and tracing capacity was limited and social distancing and lockdown requirements

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Sawyer Crosby, a data analyst at the University of Washington.83 In settings without recent experience with epidemics and pandemics, “people are likely to adopt protective behavior, such as wearing face masks or social distancing, only when public health officials and government leaders have increased their awareness of the risk, as well as

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put on ice—restaurants, entertainment, travel and tourism, retail, and a considerable portion of manufacturing—while other industries, particularly in the services sector, went virtual. Social distancing—the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would recommend six feet between individuals to avoid the contagion—was encouraged. Countries would handle the

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(compared to 455 in India, 275 in Pakistan, 148 in China, and 36 in the United States). As a consequence of overcrowding, measures such as social distancing are nearly impossible to execute. Consider Dhaka: the city itself has more than 10 million residents, and 21.5 million people live in the greater

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offices, with the exception of emergency services. All domestic travel by air, water, and rail was banned. People were asked to stay at home, practice social distancing when in public, and avoid large gatherings. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi migrants who had recently returned from abroad were told to isolate themselves for

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most exposed to the pandemic’s impact suddenly found themselves on the front lines of environmental disaster. It created a vicious cycle: the plight of COVID-19 and the problems of flooding reinforced each other. The latter made it even more challenging to observe public health measures such as social distancing and frequent handwashing

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for rapid spread. What proved to be the case in Bangladesh was common elsewhere. Dense cities and poverty-stricken slums in many developing countries made social distancing impractical, as did crowded rural households and communal living conditions. Poor sanitation and inadequate health care systems further complicated containment efforts. Then there was inadequate

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, a large number of informal workers, and grinding poverty. Across Latin America, almost one-fifth of the population lives in situations that make social distancing a pipe dream; in pre-COVID Peru, more than one-third of the urban population resided in crowded slums in the capital, Lima, and other cities. These impoverished

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as we saw with Bangladesh and Peru, for the significant number of Kenyans living in urban slums—in this case, in Nairobi, Mombasa, and elsewhere—social distancing was simply a fantasy. People left their homes to eke out a living. On several occasions, Kenyan police were accused of using excessive force to

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in many low-income nations, the fact that the majority of Afghans worked in the informal sector and fell below the poverty line meant that social distancing was neither feasible nor enforceable, especially given the limited capacity and reach of the government. Low health literacy, a paucity of masks, and limited

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an ongoing war, and the difficulties of containing COVID-19 proved insurmountable. Given this, most early containment measures were abandoned by June.22 By the end of the year, official public health advisories were the butt of jokes, and many Afghans shunned masks and social distancing. “There’s no coronavirus,” a young seller

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for Ramadan in late April. And as public protests over COVID-related measures grew and the price of oil—which accounts for 90 percent of the Iraqi government’s revenue—plummeted, authorities were forced to loosen economic restrictions and border controls. Social distancing, proper hygiene, and the use of masks were encouraged, but

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deployed anywhere in the world. In early March, it banned gatherings at places of worship, schools, weddings, and sporting events. Nonessential businesses were shuttered, and social distancing and hygiene requirements were imposed across the country, with special protective measures implemented for those parts of the economy—such as agricultural collection centers—that

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Rwandan case is emblematic of a fundamental dilemma posed by pandemics. By their very nature, significant public health emergencies require decisive government action. As we discussed in Part II of this book, governments that moved swiftly to deploy measures to encourage social distancing, impose stay-at-home orders where necessary, restrict movement, provide

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the French city of Nice, drones were used to monitor compliance with travel restrictions and social distancing; two months later, the Conseil d’État (one of France’s supreme courts) banned the use of drones for COVID-related surveillance on privacy grounds.22 Even more pervasive was the proliferation of mobile smartphone apps

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had sought expanded access to cellphone location data.29 The justifications seemed reasonable: the access would enable governments to better conduct contact tracing and enforce social distancing and quarantine measures. It would also facilitate the use of Big Data analytics to understand and predict broad patterns of people’s movements and behaviors

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the risk of infection seriously. Mask wearing was nearly universal and compliance with social distancing regulations was high.48 With government actions and public concern over COVID-19 discouraging crowds, the scale of pro-democracy demonstrations dwindled starting in January. Social distancing regulations were used disproportionately to target pro-democracy activists, breaking up even small

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the midst of Lebanon’s political chaos, efforts to control the pandemic collapsed. Protests in the streets, mounting homelessness, large numbers of volunteers assisting with clearing debris and providing humanitarian relief, overwhelmed hospitals, and widespread mistrust of the government all made social distancing measures moot. Coronavirus cases skyrocketed, with infections increasing from around

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exception of Italy, lower compliance with pandemic-related hygiene measures was observed across the continent.20 Jean-François Delfraissy, who had been tapped in March to lead the French government’s Scientific Council on COVID-19, lamented that “the French have lost the notion of social distancing and caution.”21 In many cases, younger

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would last for months. What happened in Ireland was a warning to the rest of the EU: the new variants combined with any relaxation of social distancing rules could lead to a rapid and catastrophic reversal in fortune. In January 2021, Germany, France, and many other European countries followed suit and

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Trump administration continued to delegate most COVID-related decisions to the states, contributing to an incoherent patchwork of interventions. The aggregate availability of testing increased markedly, but it remained uneven across the country.35 States and localities also varied wildly in terms of mask mandates, social distancing requirements, stay-at-home orders,

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but that he only wore them when he felt he needed to. “Tonight is an example. Everyone has had a test and you’ve had social distancing and all of the things you have to,” Trump declared, before proceeding to mock Biden for always wearing a mask.96 Trump was right that

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they were in no position to ensure individual compliance on social distancing, build up sufficient health care capacity, or provide adequate safety nets for idle workers. A rigorous process of self-criticism will be essential for identifying necessary reforms and preparing for future pandemics. Americans also must find a consensus on facts and

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March 22, 2020, https://www.newagebd.net/article/102928/flights-from-all-countries-but-china-hk-uk-thailand-suspended; Faisal Mahmud, “Coronavirus: In Dense Bangladesh, Social Distancing a Tough Task,” Al Jazeera, March 20, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/3/20/coronavirus-in-dense-bangladesh

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-social-distancing-a-tough-task; Julhas Alam, “Bangladesh’s Leader Urges All Citizens to Stay at Home,” Associated Press, March 25, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/a6cced0c1975a8859d2d227cf5d79700; Md. Kamruzzaman and SM Najmus Sakib, “Bangladesh Imposes Total Lockdown over COVID-19,” Anadolu Agency, March 25, 2020,

Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic

by Scott Gottlieb  · 20 Sep 2021

(NPIs) would work in the real world. They had modeled three different scenarios based on achieving different levels of community-wide social distancing. Taking into consideration the transmissibility of a pandemic strain, they found that timely adoption of these measures could substantially limit the spread of disease. The models also found that speed

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however, differed from the strategies that would ultimately be imported into the COVID response. In workplaces, for example, Hatchett and Mecher didn’t envision that businesses would be closed entirely. Instead, businesses would follow plans to limit spread through social distancing. The plan Hatchett and Mecher crafted had discussed recommendations to close certain

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agencies, including the CDC, had been telling him since March that the government was compiling bottom-line, county-level data on COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the timing of social distancing mandates, testing, and other factors that could provide insights on how policy actions were affecting how fast and wide the virus

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for Schools Stirs Debate,” New York Times, March 16, 2021. 38.World Health Organization, “COVID-19: Physical Distancing,” https://www.who.int/westernpacific/emergencies/covid-19/information/physical-distancing. 39.William Booth, “Two Meters? One Meter Plus? Social Distancing Rules Prompt Fierce Debate in U.K.,” Washington Post, June 22, 2020. 40.European

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131 community spread, 78, 85–87 initial reporting, 21 manufacturing capacity, 318–19 social distancing, 218 testing, 131, 218 FDA (Food and Drug Administration), 378 antibody drugs, 305–6, 311 clinical trials, 286–87 convalescent plasma, 297–99 COVID tests. See FDA (Food and Drug Administration) testing drug manufacturing, 265–69 drug

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55, 255, 256, 257–58 mask wearing, 249 MERS outbreak, 163, 171, 256–58, 261, 273, 279 rapid response to COVID, 255–64 SARS outbreak, 256 social cohesion in, 261–62 social distancing, 214 testing, 256, 257–61, 277 testing capacity, 260 testing supplies, 163–64 virtual drill, 255–56 South Korea Disease

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze  · 15 Nov 2021  · 561pp  · 138,158 words

-CoV-2, 51; mortality rates, 28, 36–37, 37–41, 169, 171; mutation/variants, 17, 44–46, 250, 266, 285; and second wave of pandemic, 223, 292; and social distancing measures, 10, 43–44, 45, 74–75, 80, 83–85, 89, 96, 107, 220, 233, 289 SARS epidemic (2003), 3–4, 34, 46

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

by Fareed Zakaria  · 5 Oct 2020  · 289pp  · 86,165 words

this new infection: electron microscopes had not been invented, nor had antiviral drugs. Still, the three most important guidelines from health authorities at the time—social distancing, masks, and handwashing—remain three of the four most important mechanisms used today to slow the spread of coronavirus, until the development of a vaccine

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provides two striking examples. In May 2020, Neil Ferguson was forced to resign his government post after he was found to have broken his own social distancing rules by meeting up with his lover. An even bigger outpouring of public anger followed later that month, with the revelation that Boris Johnson’s

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the lockdown, the city only inched back to some semblance of normalcy. Pre-pandemic, each of Paris’s commuter trains could carry some 2,600 passengers—after Covid, that number was slashed to 700 as a result of new social distancing guidelines. Separating people in cities, especially during rush hour and on public transportation

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reelected during the pandemic and is steaming ahead with her agenda. Her popularity is understandable—even driving a brand-new Peugeot loses some of its appeal if everything you need is within walking distance. Public transportation, too, might become less crowded, a welcome outcome amid lingering concerns about social distancing. If the Paris

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of Great Communication,” 92nd Street Y, April 23, 2020. 81 a science lesson: Jhag Balla, “This Viral Angela Merkel Clip Explains the Risks of Loosening Social Distancing Too Fast,” Vox, April 17, 2020; and Katrin Bennhold, “Relying on Science and Politics, Merkel Offers a Cautious Virus Re-entry Plan,” New York Times

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of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” SSRN, March 30, 2020, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3562796. (Note: This study, and those by Painter and Qiu and Allcott et al. below, has not been peer-reviewed.) 86 less likely to shelter in place: Marcus Painter and Tian Qiu, “Political Beliefs Affect Compliance with COVID-19 Social Distancing Orders

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,” SSRN, July 3, 2020, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3569098; Hunt Allcott, Levi Boxell, Jacob Conway, Matthew Gentzkow, Michael Thaler, and David Y. Yang, “Polarization and Public Health: Partisan Differences in Social Distancing During the Coronavirus Pandemic,” SSRN, June 2020, https://ssrn.com/abstract

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., “Transmissibility and Geographic Spread of the 1889 Influenza Pandemic,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 19 (May 11, 2010): 8778–81, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1000886107. 125 slashed to 700: Benoît Morenne and Vivien Ngo, “Train Drain: How Social Distancing Is Transforming Mass Transit,” Wall Street Journal, June

Duty of Care: One NHS Doctor's Story of the Covid-19 Crisis

by Dr Dominic Pimenta  · 2 Sep 2020  · 304pp  · 95,306 words

; a PDF file providing COVID management tips is jumping from group to group; and daily briefings are being set up at some hospitals to help keep staff up to date and informed. Some places seem to be ahead of the curve, arranging video teleconferences, closing clinics and practising social distancing. Other hospitals appear

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be way behind, cramming all their staff into a single lecture theatre (where social distancing just isn’t possible) to make announcements, keeping clinics open, and even castigating staff for sending too many swabs to be tested for COVID, as they try not to be identified as a hospital with a high number

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has survived the purge, I queue and wait, crammed in a 30-person-long line, posting a few tweets about social distancing without irony. It feels like we are just making the pandemic worse, at least in London – with panic-buying crowds and rebellious pub-goers. There’s a disconnect between what we

Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One

by Debora MacKenzie  · 13 Jul 2020  · 266pp  · 80,273 words

large gatherings, close schools and workplaces, and generally reduce interaction between people to slow the spread of the disease, a set of measures known as social distancing. At the extreme, as so many of us now know, you lock down and keep people inside. You don’t entirely stop the spread of

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diseases do when there is nothing to stop them, until the cordon sanitaire was thrown around Wuhan. After that, and as similar travel bans and social distancing orders were imposed across China, case numbers stopped rising. The impact was stunning: China’s epidemic actually peaked in mid-February, a turning point predicted

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s a lot. And contact tracing might not be enough. As we have seen, the Chinese subsequently discovered that the key to stopping Covid-19 is using social distancing as well as containment. The variable that matters—and about the only piece of epidemiology jargon you really need to know to get all

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which the epidemic stops growing. So even if Wuhan had thrown itself into containment at the start, it may not have stopped the epidemic without social distancing as well. Epidemiologists would very possibly have known too little about the virus at that point to make a case for such drastic measures. Even

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much later, with far less excuse, some Western countries were slow to admit the need for such disruption. “Social distancing is the magic ingredient in control,” says epidemiologist David Fisman of the University of Toronto, another SARS veteran. “I have no reason to think they

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could reasonably have known that massive social distancing was needed in response to what at first appeared to be just a disease cluster in Wuhan.” That’s the trouble with a new disease

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Other countries could have started testing people who had traveled to Wuhan earlier. As more cases appeared, China might have been able to impose the social distancing that would have made the difference, perhaps before five million people carried the virus out of Wuhan. Those things happened anyway, but an earlier warning

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know what works against this virus. We know what to do,” Aylward said. He dismissed claims that only China could have imposed the containment and social distancing needed—the rest of the world could follow their model, adapting measures to their own conditions. He just wasn’t sure the rest of the

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The measures actually cut the transmission of flu at the same time by nearly half. As in other epidemics, ordinary people’s behavior—masks and social distancing—made the difference. At university lectures in Singapore in March, a maximum of 50 students were allowed, they sat at two-meter distances, and a

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that, South Korea had invented drive-through testing by late March. Positives were isolated and contacts quarantined; by April, case numbers were falling, without severe social distancing. The story was similar in Singapore and Taiwan. The difference was the early start that China had missed. Digital privacy experts have valid concerns about

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leaked the evening before, and people fled, carrying the virus all over Italy. The whole country was shut down the next day. In many countries, social distancing was partial or delayed, to the point where curves were barely flattened. Testing was delayed or restricted, endangering health care workers and patients and preventing

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Viruses that spread before they cause symptoms are very hard to contain: look at HIV. Because SARS didn’t spread as readily as Covid-19, no severe social distancing was needed to slow its spread enough to cut the number of contacts that had to be quarantined and make containment possible. There were

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doesn’t work for fast-spreading flu, but as China showed, it works for Covid-19. The WHO delayed calling Covid-19 a pandemic partly because they feared countries would abandon containment and testing and rush straight to flu-inspired social distancing—and for some countries, it may have been right about that. Many countries

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exposed in order to develop “herd immunity.” This was in turn abandoned when scientists explained how many deaths this would entail. It was replaced by social distancing, but the delay, plus weak enforcement, led by May 2020 to Europe’s highest death rate. Meanwhile limited protective equipment took a high toll of

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provide emergency income for people who have lost their jobs to social distancing. A lot may depend on how governments decide to handle the debt that will result, but many voters may prefer their tax money to go to better medicines and pandemic preparation than to some kinds of bailouts. It is accepted

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Covid-19 vaccines. The virus is likely to keep circulating, at some level, everywhere until we have a vaccine and use it widely. That means countries will need to keep testing and interrupting chains of transmission to contain it—or if they fail to, they will have more large outbreaks requiring social distancing

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of a network of interdependencies wobbles, the rest is at risk. The Covid-19 pandemic does not have a high rate of sickness and death, so large percentages of the population are not being disabled by disease. But the social distancing measures being used to slow its spread are stopping much economic activity. Tellingly

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in poverty, which in turn means more people who are extra vulnerable in a pandemic—including many of the people responsible for critical infrastructure. Some—for example in the meat-packing industry, where social distancing has been absent and Covid-19 has struck hard, but also in health care and many other sectors—are

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back, although not knocked out. But would anyone have realized those measures were needed? The virus that causes Covid-19, we now know, can be difficult to stop by just isolating cases and tracing their contacts without added social distancing, even though that worked for SARS, as doctors in Wuhan would have known

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Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, never needed the total lockdown used in Hubei, but as the WHO reported, many of them found they needed social distancing as well as isolation and contact tracing to halt the epidemic. In early January, public health officials in Wuhan didn’t know any of that

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that they would have imposed control measures that extreme, knowing only what they knew about Covid-19 at the time. They would probably have done what worked for SARS, and it would not have been enough. Beside social distancing, widespread testing to catch pre-symptomatic or symptomless cases would also have been needed

Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic

by Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin  · 14 Jul 2022  · 244pp  · 78,238 words

of cruising with people from places where COVID-19 hadn’t yet taken hold were shattered. Aboard the Zaandam were 305 Americans, 247 Canadians, 229 UK citizens, 105 French, and 131 Australians. The passengers crowded around one another, leaning in, talking, hugging, laughing. No social-distancing protocols were visible. Claudia heard a

Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster

by Nick Timiraos  · 1 Mar 2022  · 357pp  · 107,984 words

of the Trump administration. Between September and the end of October 2020, US covid cases doubled to 80,000 per day. By Thanksgiving they had more than doubled again, to 180,000, as more Americans appeared to forgo social distancing as the holidays approached. Economists at JPMorgan Chase projected a slight contraction in

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company was hiring. Automated real-estate appraisals and online-video home tours had enabled more transactions to occur, even with social-distancing measures in place. Home-buying demand quickly returned to pre-pandemic levels, fueled by work-from-home policies, the desire for more space, and falling mortgage rates. Homes were in such

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

by Michael Lewis  · 3 May 2021  · 285pp  · 98,832 words

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt

by Sinan Aral  · 14 Sep 2020  · 475pp  · 134,707 words

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice

by Jamie K. McCallum  · 15 Nov 2022  · 349pp  · 99,230 words

Covid by Numbers

by David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters  · 28 Oct 2021

Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick

by J. David McSwane  · 11 Apr 2022  · 368pp  · 102,379 words

COVID-19: Everything You Need to Know About the Corona Virus and the Race for the Vaccine

by Michael Mosley  · 1 Jun 2020  · 89pp  · 27,057 words

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid

by Lawrence Wright  · 7 Jun 2021  · 391pp  · 112,312 words

In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us

by Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee  · 10 Mar 2025  · 393pp  · 146,371 words

Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic

by Rachel Clarke  · 26 Jan 2021  · 199pp  · 63,844 words

The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again

by Richard Horton  · 31 May 2020  · 106pp  · 33,210 words

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It

by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge  · 1 Sep 2020  · 134pp  · 41,085 words

Rikers: An Oral History

by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau  · 17 Jan 2023  · 492pp  · 152,167 words

The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism

by Grace Blakeley  · 14 Oct 2020  · 82pp  · 24,150 words

May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases—And What We Can Do About It

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Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

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The Trauma Chronicles

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Risk: A User's Guide

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Age of the City: Why Our Future Will Be Won or Lost Together

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Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

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Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley

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The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide

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The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future

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Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus

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The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future

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Spike: The Virus vs The People - The Inside Story

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Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

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Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else

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The Stolen Year

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Happy-Go-Lucky

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Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy

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Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy

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Heavy Metal: The Hard Days and Nights of the Shipyard Workers Who Build America's Supercarriers

by Michael Fabey  · 13 Jun 2022  · 319pp  · 102,839 words

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis

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Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere

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AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

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Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs

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Longshot

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The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees

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Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency

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Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

by Brad Stone  · 10 May 2021  · 569pp  · 156,139 words

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?

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A Short History of Humanity: How Migration Made Us Who We Are

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The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

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Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing

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Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters

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Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream

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The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family

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The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

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Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

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Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

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System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot

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The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation

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Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy

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Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix

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The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation

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Lonely Planet Wales

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On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

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The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America

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Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

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The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits' Improbable Crusade to Save the World From Cybercrime

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How the World Ran Out of Everything

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Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge

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The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World

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Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis

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Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality

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Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity

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The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

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Invention: A Life

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The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations

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Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus

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Deadly Quiet City: True Stories From Wuhan

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Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

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Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing

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Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths From the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs

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Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader

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Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives

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Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination

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Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following

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Greater: Britain After the Storm

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Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis

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Emotional Ignorance: Lost and Found in the Science of Emotion

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Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul

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Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future

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House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company

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How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (And Knowing When to Trust Them)

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The Great Post Office Scandal: The Fight to Expose a Multimillion Pound Scandal Which Put Innocent People in Jail

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Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It

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The Miracle Pill

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Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power

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Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

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One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger

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Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal

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A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder

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The Soul of Wealth

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Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

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How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World

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Completely Mad: Tom McClean, John Fairfax, and the Epic of the Race to Row Solo Across the Atlantic

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Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-And What We Can Do About It

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Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century

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Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong

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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

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The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet

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Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business

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The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It

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Why geography matters: three challenges facing America : climate change, the rise of China, and global terrorism

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Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future

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Beautiful Visualization

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The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze

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Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star  · 25 Aug 2000  · 357pp  · 125,142 words

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

by Anand Giridharadas  · 27 Aug 2018  · 296pp  · 98,018 words

The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain?

by Polly Toynbee and David Walker  · 6 Oct 2011  · 471pp  · 109,267 words

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

by Owen Jones  · 14 Jul 2011  · 317pp  · 101,475 words

The Asian Financial Crisis 1995–98: Birth of the Age of Debt

by Russell Napier  · 19 Jul 2021  · 511pp  · 151,359 words