The Contagion Detective: The COVID-19 pandemic was some epidemiologist’s nightmare when Adam Kucharski was writing Rules of Contagion. Released this week, the book, which includes brief mentions of the encroaching COVID-19 storm, draws on ideas from “outbreak science” to illuminate how and why viruses spread. Information from biology, Kucharski expertly demonstrates, has helped scientists understand how misinformation rages like fire in the fields of politics and finance. Kucharski is entitled to feel like Nostradamus, but people in his field “always have the next pandemic on the radar,” he told Wired.
