Newly revised and updated in the light of COVID-19
For most of the latter part of the last century, and the early part of
this, Britain has been assailed by a succession of 'scares', from
salmonella and eggs to BSE, from the Millennium Bug to bird flu, from
DDT to passive smoking, from asbestos to global warming.
These scares have become one of the most conspicuous and damaging
features of our modern world, so much so that as we entered the third
decade of the new century, our senses had become so blunted that we
scarcely recognised the real thing for what it was, until it arrived -
COVID-19, for which we were almost completely unprepared.
The authors analyse the crucial roles of the different factions who
perpetrated the scares: from the scientists who misread or manipulated
the evidence to the media and lobbyists who eagerly promoted scares
without regard to the consequences, and the politicians and officials
who came up with absurdly disproportionate responses, leaving us to pay
a colossal price.
In this updated edition, Scared to Death not only presents a detailed
account of the scares that have dominated our society for the past 50
years - through all of which the authors lived - but also examines the
background to the COVID-19 pandemic, tracing our lack of preparedness to
its roots and then assessing, by way of contrast, why this is the real
thing, as opposed to the succession of scares that we have experienced.
