Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service

This 'history' of the Epidemic Intelligence Service is mostly a series of profiles of particular epidemiological investigations performed by various members of the EIS, and of vaccination/prevention outreach initiatives they have been involved in. That episodic nature makes it a good book to drop

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into at random, but it also avoids the overarching narrative fallacy that sometimes affects such histories. The author clearly reveres the work that the EIS and its workers have done, so there's a bit of hagiography here. On the other hand, some failed investigations are also reported, and the issue of vaccine-derived polio cases from the Oral Polio Vaccine-- and the communication around them-- is discussed frankly. The reader gets a general sense of how these investigations work and what case-control studies do, as well as a general sense of how outbreaks of disease are studied. Overall, an interesting, enjoyable and educational book for those interested in public health.
Reading it in 2021, I feel a certain visceral discomfort thinking about what the post-2016 years and especially the Covid-19 pandemic may have wrought in the EIS and the CDC in general, but that's a story to be told later, I believe.

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