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The Barbary Plague is a book on the yersina pestis outbreak in turn of the century San Fransisco. This is fascinating in it's familiarity. The politics of plague haven't changed much, apparently. Replace the rabidly racist anti-Chinese rants with homophobes calling down the wrath of God in the form of a gay plague on one side and the Chinese leaders and white business leaders on the other side doing cover ups to protect their community and pockets from the repercussion with the people blocking public health measures and advocating unsafe practices and the picture is scary in it's familiarity. The slow initial creep is familiar too. A few deaths here and there among people considered undesirable, a handful of doctors a a translator trying to do what they think is best in a time when little about transmission is known and there is really no treatment. People watching helplessly while patient after patient dies while everybody else drags their feet on prevention and the ill are hidden and the disease spreads until it explodes when critical mass of infection is reached. Meanwhile, nearly everyone plays politics while the crisis grows.

I am still angry. I was angry in the 80's watching the AIDS crisis unfold. I am angry reading about the Bubonic outbreak in San Francisco more than a century ago. It would sure be nice if we apes actually learned something, wouldn't it? But we don't, because money and political expediency matter more than lives generally to those in power.