The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston ★★★★★

“The dream of total eradication had failed, the viruses last strategy was to bewitch its host and become a source of power. We could eradicate smallpox from nature but we could not uproot the virus from the human heart.” 

My mother has a smallpox vaccine scar on her arm and I do not. That I’ve never had to worry about it is thanks largely to Donald Ainslie Henderson. That I may have to worry about it in the future is the fault of well meaning, and possibly narcissistic, scientists, forgetful virologists, or terrorists. 

The Covid-19 virus is giving us just the merest taste of what a smallpox outbreak would mean in today’s mobile population.