The Flu Pandemic and You, Vincent Lam
The Flu Pandemic and You, Vincent Lam
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The Flu Pandemic and You
A Canadian Guide

Author: Vincent Lam, Dr. Colin Lee, Margaret Atwood

Narrator: Fred Sanders

Unabridged: 10 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/05/2020


Synopsis

An essential survival guide—both to pandemic influenza, and to the hype surrounding it.

Written by an emergency physician and a public health physician, The Flu Pandemic and You is a timely and forthright guide on how to prepare for an influenza pandemic, and how to understand the broader context in which this health threat exists.

With cool heads and professional expertise, Drs. Lam and Lee carefully explain how readers can assess their level of risk, and set out practical advice on how to contend with a pandemic, addressing such issues as:

• How the flu virus works and what level of threat Canadians really face
• How to help protect yourself and your family from contracting influenza
• How to identify symptoms
• What you need to know about antiviral drugs
• What to do in a worst-case scenario

The Flu Pandemic and You develops a lucid framework to help people understand the current anxiety about influenza in the context of the risks we all face in our daily lives. This crucially important book, full of reasoned, knowledgeable advice, is an indispensable resource for fearful times.

About The Author

Vincent Lam was born in 1974 in London, Ont., into a family from the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam. Four years later, they moved to Ottawa where he was raised on stories told by his father and the works of C.S. Lewis and Roald Dahl, and developed aspirations to become a writer. Acknowledging that he hadn’t seen enough of the world to create great literary works, Lam enrolled in medical school at the University of Toronto, hoping it would provide real-life experience and a wealth of rich material. His plan proved to be a very good one.It was while working as a doctor aboard an Arctic cruise that Lam had a chance encounter with renowned author Margaret Atwood. She agreed to read his short stories, and later sent him an email announcing “Congratulations. You can write.” Atwood mentored the young author, and was instrumental in bringing Lam to his publisher, Doubleday Canada. While crafting his debut collection of short stories, Lam worked in the emergency room at Toronto East General Hospital and helped fight the 2003 SARS outbreak. “An emergency physician is often in the centre of a storm of tensions and drama,” he says. “We work in a world that is both medical and personal, where the stakes are high and events are unpredictable. As a doctor, I respond to the world around me, and act within that world. As a writer, I do something fresh and new on the page.”Lam’s depiction of four medical students who become doctors in Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures was so unique and accomplished that the collection won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize – Canada’s most prestigious literary award. He is the youngest writer, and the only first-time author, to win it. Next up is Lam’s first novel, Cholon, Near Forgotten, which follows a Chinese man in Saigon, headmaster of an English school as well as a compulsive gambler, during the Vietnam War. Shaftesbury Films is currently developing Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures into a TV drama series for The Movie Network and Lam will act as a consultant while continuing to work as an emergency physician in Toronto, where he lives with his wife and son.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ian on March 19, 2020

3.5 ⭐ I read this in 2010 after the H1N1 flu outbreak (which now seems almost benign, compared to the present pandemic). The book is well researched and written in a plain, easy to follow style by two ER doctors who are front line veterans of the 2003 SARS outbreak. Because of the authors' knowledge,......more

Goodreads review by Amy Rhoda on April 26, 2020

[This review is taken from my blog and was written Nov 2009] This book is a guide to the pandemic. It was written with the avian flu pandemic (H5N1) in mind, but since 2006 H1N1 has come to the fore. Fortunately the issues are all but identical. (Thrillingly enough, H5N1 is still out there and could......more

Goodreads review by Harding on April 06, 2020

I first read this book in 2008, when it was just a warning to get prepared. Reading now during the greatest pandemic in over a century is quite sobering. No doubt, Dr. Lam will have another chapter to add when this is all over.......more

Goodreads review by Ben on December 18, 2020

Interesting book. It is still too bad that some people can't abide by the rules and are still going to things like gyms in the pandemic.......more


Quotes

Winner of the American Medical Writers Association's Special Recognition Award

"A calm, practical and very thorough guide." —Margaret Atwood, from the Foreword

"Lam and Lee were front line doctors during Toronto's 2003 SARS outbreak and they are superb writers." —The Vancouver Sun

"The Flu Pandemic and You: A Canadian Guide manages to be both highly informative and very reassuring. . . . The authors take us into situations we don't want to think about, like being in the same house with family members suffering from influenza, and describe the procedures that will get everyone through with the best chance of survival. Whether they're dealing with N95 masks (awkward and probably not needed) or the wisdom of getting to know your neighbours, Lam and Lee write with calm lucidity. . . . [And] they explain enough to reassure the most anxious hypochondriac. When the pandemic does hit . . . this book will be more valuable than Tamiflu." —The Tyee