I’ve “known” the author Andrew Duxbury for more than 20 years online. We were both once writers on the website formerly known as Epinions. Even there, his style of writing was a lot of fun. It could be cutting and acerbic as well as quite witty. You’ll get much the same in his “diary” of the first year of the COVID pandemic, The Accidental Plague Diaries.
Andrew is a geriatric doctor at the University of Alabama. For the most part, the patients he saw during the pandemic were the ones our politicians were initially willing to let die in the name of keeping the economy going; the elderly and most fragile among us. This can be daunting and depressing, but Andrew manages to craft a book that is sobering and dark while also being witty and entertaining. He drifts into anecdotes of his life at times, which are very interesting. His observations on how this first year of the pandemic was handled are cutting, as he challenges the decisions made by people who had no qualifications to make them.
This is a unique perspective from someone who was on the frontlines of the pandemic. He presents the information that was coming out of newsrooms in a way anyone can understand, and this helps understand why the soundbites that were trying to minimize the effects of COVID-19 on the population were so disingenuous. When counting deaths, many people who hadn’t studied biology since the ninth grade were suddenly spouting off about “comorbidities” and other terms they knew nothing about. But, hey, their favorite talking head said that’s the real problem so it must be. What do those doctors and scientists really know?
SATURDAY | JULY 11, 2020
We’re up to over 70,000 new diagnoses daily in this country, more than 130,000 are dead, hospitals in multiple states are running out of ICU beds, and Walt Disney World has decided it’s a great time to reopen.
Well, if you read The Accidental Plague Diaries you’ll get a better feeling for what they really know and why. Andrew also discusses the numbers being reported at various intervals and what they mean as far as gauging how the pandemic travels. It was quite informative for those of us who understood some of what was happening but not all of it.
At the same time, Andrew drifts into anecdotes of life under quarantine as well as his life in general. This is filled with moments of humor in the midst of the darkness. With only his two cats to keep him company, he led a rather isolated life even while others were trying to get back to some sense of normalcy. He cared more about bringing COVID to those he was encountering during worktime than living it up like there was no tomorrow. This is the part that truly reads like a diary.
From a time when freezer trucks were being used as morgues in major cities, to hope on the horizon for a vaccine, Andrew takes us along with him in a year a lot of people would like to forget. It’s important we don’t forget it, though, especially now when we have an anti-vaxxer (and general all-around nutcase) being proposed to lead Health & Human Services in the new administration. Do we really want to go back to dark times such as these? It’s not just an issue with COVID and the vaccine, but also measles, polio, whooping cough, and more.
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Categories: Book Reviews
Sadly, I’ve become disillusioned with a vast chunk of my fellow countrymen. Sure, there are still many Americans who are compassionate and believe that what affects one affects everyone sooner or later. Unfortunately, there are far too many, especially in the conservative swath of the population, who are either undereducated or blinded by political beliefs to think of their fellow human beings as well as themselves.
Self-centeredness and ignorance aren’t new wrinkles in the American fabric; they’ve always been a part of our society/culture, just as there’s always been a huge divide between rural America and urban America. That selfishness of spirit was a huge factor in the longevity of chattel slavery, especially in the South after that “peculiar institution” petered out in New England and other Northern regions. The “genteel Southerners” that inspired “Gone With the Wind” reacted to the abolitionist movement with the same ferocity exhibited by anti-vaxxers during the COVID-19 plague. Both groups believed that their beliefs were sacrosanct, and both sides didn’t want to suffer any inconveniences by changing their lifestyles. Worse still, slaveowners and anti-vaxxers both showed a disregard for the well-being of other human beings.
Thank you for this enlightening review of Andrew’s book. He’s also an Epinions friend of long standing!