The Covid-19 Catastrophe What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop it Happening Again Second Edition Expanded and Updated by Richard Horton

 The Covid-19 

Catastrophe What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop it Happening Again Second Edition Expanded and Updated by Richard Horton is the best book on Covid that you can find around. Written by the editor of Lancet, with competence but also with highly fruibility, this reading will reach every citizen of this world and every reader. You won't find too many specialistic terms that will frustrate you; the narration is absolutely captivating, let me use this term.

When on january 2020 the news of a severe weird, uncommon unresponsive to the common therapies, pneumonia interested in that first dramatic outbreak the city of Wuhan, in the province of Hubei, China, I immediately understood that this one would have been our pandemic. I couldn't believe that it would have stayed isolated in China or other close asian countries. 

The echo of Spanish Flu, the echoes of past pestilences became strong also if we hadn't directly lived them. 

A city with 11-12 million, didn't leave chance for a different scenario.

My readings on this topic were pretty fresh: months before the outbreak of Wuhan I read the book by Laura Spinney: Pale Rider. The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World and just ten days before the discovery of the chinese outbreak I posted my review on Viral Modernism by Elizabeth Outka. 

I recognized the danger and till then I tried to communicate the importance of knowledge, sharing good informations for staying vigilant, and alert.

We can avoid this pestilence with proper behaviors and isolation. The price is big, but it would be better not catch this virus.

Said this, Horton opens the book with a consideration: we avoided a pandemic with the direct "cousin" of this horrible virus: Sars-Cov-1, SARS on 2002-2003. There were many deaths but the illness remained confined in certain countries of the world. It was a lesson well learned by China, this time quick in the response wth the international organisms.

Coronavirus are pretty known viruses because they are good friends with various mammals, man included, and in general they cause cold. The commistion of this virus with another animal created this "jump" of quality and the first mutation in something else: a pestilence.

First of all: COVID will remain? And: is it just a pandemic? A pandemic flu arrives, kill and then slowly disappears. The virus of the Spanish flu circulated till 1923, but killed 50-100 million of people during the first year of its existence. 

No: the COVID-19 is not a common pandemic writes Horton. 

Why this? 

From the book: 

"The reality is that two categories of disease are interacting together and within specific populations: infection with a coronavirus is causing particular harm among those who are older and those who are living with chronic disease, such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension. Worse, these interactions are clustering within particular social group according to patterns of inequality deeply embedded within our societes." 

Horton classifies COVID-19 a syndemic, or said differently: a syntehsis of epidemics. 

"A much more nuance approach is needed if we are to protect the health of our communities" writes Horton.

Reducing chronic illnesses is a first step for arresting the prepotent aggressivity of COVID in our society.

Every pandemic is similar or different to the other ones experienced in the past: in this sense Horton takes in consideration  the book by Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year: it describes the behavior of the population: what happened in 2020 is similar: there was the initial enthusiasm of people confined at home; later this confinement was lived, when a second, third wave arrived with powerful intolerance; this lack of freedom meant and means the desire to return to the normality. 

Feelings that we are proving are normals. But this one is not a normal phase of our existence:  this one is an exceptional moment: I heard people saying that these ones are stolen years for youngs and adults.

No one is stealing years; they are just different years because of the exceptionality of the moment. It's important to understand this.

But...Which was the answer of the several countries and continents in the world when they firstly approached COVID-19?

China understood that this one was a powerful treat for the world and offered immediately all the possible knowledge for describing this terrible illness.

Our Western countries, Europe and America have completely failed the approach against COVID-19 not understanding the risk that every country would have potentially experienced in a few months.

In China scientists sequenced the virus's genome, and spread the news in the entire world: they immediately let know to WHO that there was a great problem in Wuhan and possibly for the world; WHO, later communicated to all the countries of the world this serious danger. It was necessary to stay alert because there was a serious problem in China but this problem could interest also the rest of the world. 

No one understood or took in serious consideration what WHO was saying. Maybe it was just necessary to call some  doctors in China, as suggests Horton for trying to understand what it was going on; but no one did it.

Time passed by. China adopted a severe lockdown, like many other Asian countries and most of them didn't lose a lot of citizens. 

New Zealand was incredibly lucky! as it was also during the Spanish Flu, when the second wave didn't invest the country because they closed every communication with the outside world.

Europe was seeing as a horror movie what was going on in China. 

UK with Boris Johnson lived tragic moments, because Johnson didn't believe at the arrival of a pandemic: he thought that it wasn't a risk for the population. He wanted to keep the country completely opened permitting the so-called herd immunity. Then he fell ill, understood the lesson and, too late, took all the possible measures for containing what it was more than a wave: the most tragic event experienced in recent decades by UK.

In Europe countries were not prepared by the arrival of a pandemic: there weren't sufficient intensive care unit beds for these special patients (they are infected and they can't stay with common patients, exactly like is infected a corpse of a man or woman dead because of COVID-19)  and what was noticed was also the absence of any kind of personal protection: 

Italy was the first country heavily touched by the first wave. A case, Mattia Maestri was discovered in february 20-21 in the little town of Codogno, Lombardia and three towns, more or less immediately ten, were closed: Lombardia became a red zone, entering in lockdown. But soon the dramatic discovery: the first dead of Sars-Cov-2, was in Vò Euganeo, Veneto. Adriano Trevisan was a man of 77 years  in love for bars and friends. To the hospital  for a pneumonia, he didn't answer well at any kind of treatment. After ten days, the test and the discovery of the positivity. The hospital was completely in shock: they knew what it would have meant...

The country was put in a general lockdown by our premier Giuseppe Conte at the beginning of march and stayed closed till at the beginning of may. It was clear in fact, that the virus didn't just enter with prepotence in Northern Italy, but that was circulating in the entire italian territory. 

Le Marche, a region in the center of Italy never too mentioned in this drama lost more than 1000 people in the only city of Pesaro during the first wave.

Spain and France followed the same example seen in the rest of Europe; other countries, the ones of North of Europe choose of not impose a lockdown; they just alerted, highly warming their populations that maybe it was better to staying at home, considering what was happening in the rest of the world. 

USA lived an hallucinated moment: Donald Trump was the President at that time and didn't believe at all at the arrival of a pestilence, so he strongly suggested to everyone of not wearing masks, not cleaning hands and not keeping social distancing; he also suggested to people of drinking, well, substances pretty dangerous. Some people following the President's advice, lost their existences.

Other ones, fanatics of Trumps, organized big luncheons with their entire families, falling sick; some of them died. Trump insisted all the rest of his presidency with this behavior. He was in contrast with Anthony Fauci, he rejected WHO, removing the USA from this important international organism with strong stress for the world as well. He catched the virus, but continued to play the role of the strong man. Most people at the White House fell sick because social distances not respected and most of that people did not wear masks! 

The new President Biden, air is changed! has vaccinated more than 100 million Americans. The USA are trying to stop, under many ways, this virus and its demoniac variants, but their losses are immense in terms of human beings dead because of COVID-19 and the only economy that it is going on well is the chinese one.

Bolzonaro the leader of Brazil is another populist. He doesn't believe at this virus, he hasn't adopted any kind of measure for stopping COVID and Brazil has been one of the countries more devastated by COVID-19.

The same situation has been lived in UK  with more than 130.000 dead, Italy with more than 102.000.

Why all these numbers? In countries where there are democracies, in countries where there is after all richness and possibility of good answers?

A study, apart political choices made, established that maybe our populations are more susceptible to infections than other parts of the world. 

Vaccines: they are indispensibles and 15 billion of doses will be necessary for covering the entire world and population.

Till at that moment, distant, in which all the world will be immunized, it will be indispensible wearing masks, keeping social distancing and cleaning hands wherever you go, whaterver you touch. We must remember that this first COVID, the one from Wuhan, China, changed with the time and not for better: there are aggressive variants, the British one, the Brazilian; they both responds well to the vaccine; then we have the Nigerian one, and many more variants; some of these ones can't be traced by common tests.

The story of the Biontech told by Horton the society that, in partnership with Pfizer created the first mRNA vaccine is beautiful; this  turkish couple developed anti-cancers viruses till at the advent of Covid.They decided of invest money in researchers for trying to find a good vaccine for the humanity. Four vaccines were developed, then they proceeded with the most secure one.

A little fragment, sequence of protein spike, an acid, the Mrna, is used in this vaccine for the creation of anti-bodies. 

When you see a coronavirus you notice that  kind of "crown." That ones are the keys, suckers! used by COVID for enter in our cells and damaging our body. 

Covid-19 is not an influenza and because our world is different, the impact of this pestilence hasn't been so dramatic as it was in 1918 with the Spanish one. That flu killed 100 million of people. 

There weren't medicines, there wasn't anything; no intensive care unites, not a possibility of a chance for the patients; just the luck of their immunitary system; not all the people touched heavily by the Spanish flu died; no antibiotics, no paracetamol; no one knew exactly what caused Spanish Flu. At first people thought that it could be a bacterium because viruses couldn't be seen.

With the time our world became a better place where to live in, speaking about medicine and of course vaccinations. Science has defeated important illnesses. I personally received when little the smallpox vaccine and I am ready when my turn of being vaccinated against this other pestilence! 

But...the impact of COVID-19 "will be profound and long lasting" writes Hornton.

These past decades after all have seen a lot of inequalities, loss of decent jobs, environmental destruction, and much more; democracies entered in crisis. People started to reject the common elite of politicians that were around preferring the populistic ones in grade to reach the heart of people. With the consequences that we have anyway seen in all that countries where there were or still are populistic leaders.

This world will be drastically different when this pandemic experience will be over. 

Not only: Horton writes: "There were preventible deaths. And as the second and third waves surged, lessons were not learned. The system failed. When the cycles of suppression and rebound have finally been broken by a vaccine, when life returns to some measure of normality, difficult questions will have to be asked and answered. Because we can't afford to fail again. We may not have a second chance."

Highly recommended.

I thank Polity and Wiley for the physical copy of Covid-19 Catastrophe.

Anna Maria Polidori