Covid is far from over, but despite the massacre – at least 6.5 million dead – it could have been worse: a highly contagious respiratory virus, like Covid, but with mortality rates even ten times higher could arrive, and “the humanity is not ready”. This is the gloomy prediction of David Quammen, famous American essayist and science popularizer, author of the successful book ‘Spillover’ in 2012 in which he predicted the possible arrival, probably from Asia, of a coronavirus born from a gender leap (Spillover , in fact) from animals to humans. After the pandemic he returned to the topic with two other important essays, ‘Why We Weren’t Ready’ and ‘Breathless’. In 2020, he recalls in an interview with breaking latest news, he immediately understood that perhaps the drama he hypothesized was becoming reality. “The first signal that clarified to me that the new virus in Wuhan could cause a pandemic came to me via email on January 13, 2020,” he says. “It was a message from the ProMed infectious disease alert network, sent to 80,000 subscribers, including myself, mentioning a new fact about the ‘atypical pneumonia’ outbreak in Wuhan: it was now known to be caused by a coronavirus. I knew from my research for Spillover, as did many scientists, that the coronavirus family contained viruses particularly capable of rapid evolution, with the known ability to jump from animals to humans and then spread by respiratory transmission. SARS-1, in 2003, was the first warning. MERS-CoV, in 2012, had confirmed this. I knew the story and had spoken to coronavirus experts, so I was aware that this new virus from Wuhan could spread around the world and cause devastation.”
In addition to the dramatic impact on health and human lives, Covid has also unleashed a series of global polarizations: on vaccines, for example, Quammen speaks in no uncertain terms of a “propaganda war”, which “has been enormously harmful, costing many lives. It comes from a toxic mixture of superficial ‘research’ on misleading Internet sources, a kind of populist wave of animosity towards science in general, an ignorance of what science is and how it works, a feverish anxiety of some people about compensate for their insecurities and distrust by spreading on social media what they consider ‘insider knowledge’ and the cynicism of some politicians and media (especially TV) personalities. It’s horrible”. All obviously enhanced by the diffusion capacity of social media, against which according to the writer not only scientists, but journalists and teachers should work to «educate young people to understand what science is and to acquire the skills and habits of the critical thinking”.
The risk is that in addition to the virus, another pandemic will spread, more subtle but no less lethal, that of “blindness”. Not seeing, or not wanting to see, what is happening and what could happen: «Although SARS-CoV-2 has already killed at least 6.5 million people – recalls the leaker – it could have been much worse. Its fatality rate among confirmed cases was “only” about one percent. It could have been ten percent. Another viral pandemic could come, with the same transmission capacity as SARS-CoV-2, but with much more virulence, a higher mortality rate. It could kill ten times as many people as Covid, or more. Yet, Quammen warns, «We are not ready for the next virus. Scientists and public health experts are discussing how we might be better prepared and responded to. We need political leaders to commit to this imperative as well.”
