In the most recent pandemic, in 2014, it took only 18 days. A nurse tells Dunworthy that immunizing the population won’t take long once they’ve manufactured a vaccine (in Willis’ novel, no one appears to be anti-vaccination). The British government mandates that everyone must quarantine until seven days after everyone is vaccinated or 14 days after the last reported case. Willis describes blink-of-an-eye vaccine development and immediate lockdown measures as though any other response would be unthinkable. Willis underscores a poignant truth, particularly for contemporary readers: A pandemic’s true toll is determined not by doctors and politicians, but by everyone else. In this future, there are governmental and scientific systems in place to respond rapidly to a new contagion. The very night he is hospitalized, public health workers begin tracking down his primary and secondary contacts and researchers begin sequencing the virus. Afterward, the time travel device technician who helped send the student back in time falls seriously ill with an unknown virus. In Oxford, England, history professor Dunworthy sends an undergraduate researcher back in time to what he thinks is 1320. The net prevents time travelers from altering history, so its main use is for historians conducting research. In the 2054 timeline of Doomsday Book, there are no cellphones, but thanks to a complex machine called the “net,” time travel exists. Doomsday Book-whose name is a nod to the Domesday Book, a 1086 survey commissioned by William the Conqueror-features two protagonists who try to stop the spread of deadly contagions 700 years apart.

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