Doom by Niall Ferguson

I just completed another one of my second hand books, “Doom - the politics of catastrophe” by Niall Ferguson. It is centred around the recent Covid pandemic and Ferguson analyses how authorities reacted to it compared to previous natural and man made disasters. Let’s see what the highly regarded economist and historian has to say.

The book was completed during the darkest mid point of the pandemic, before any of the vaccines were rolled out.  His main comparisons were the Spanish flu of 1918 and the lesser known Asian flu of 1957/58.  He in particular looked at government responses to more recent disasters such as Chernobyl and the deadly Boxing day tsunami of 2004.

Ferguson is very fair in his analysis, although blame can definitely be attributed to governments, there was only so much they can do.  Plus in the case of Covid, there was a natural lack of information early on.  Once the information was available it was too late. 

He doesn’t dive deeply into the science but he makes it clear that the transmission rate of the virus was but one part of the problem. It’s a very readable book on how past calamities have been dealt with and he does leave us with some best practices on how to deal with future ones.