Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth
Aug 2020 · Bloomsbury Publishing
Ebook
512
Pages
About this ebook
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.
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.
About the author
Christopher Booker wrote a regular column for the Sunday Telegraph up until shortly before his death in 2019, and was the bestselling author of The Seven Basic Plots, The Real Global Warming Disaster and, with Richard North, The Great Deception and Scared to Death. He was the founding editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye.
Dr Richard North is a former environmental health officer with a PhD in the surveillance of salmonellosis. After a stint in the European Parliament he published his daily EUReferendum blog for 16 years before relaunching it as The Turbulent Times.
Dr Richard North is a former environmental health officer with a PhD in the surveillance of salmonellosis. After a stint in the European Parliament he published his daily EUReferendum blog for 16 years before relaunching it as The Turbulent Times.
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