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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Thursday, August 06, 2020

Just Finished Reading: Infectious Disease – A Very Short Introduction by Marta L Wayne & Benjamin N Bolker (FP: 2015)

 

Continuing my latest (Pandemic Edition) book blitz this slim volume delved into what the previous book on the Immune System needs to deal with – infections & bugs. Or at least viruses and bacteria which have fought a very long war to propagate themselves at the expense of their hosts (quite often us or the animals and plants we use to survive).

Naturally anyone who has been paying attention to the news this year has picked up a fair bit of medical jargon about transmission rates and R numbers – I know I have. If you’ve struggled to understand exactly what that all means then struggle no more! This book makes such things easy to understand by the use of filters – encounter and compatibility – that help describe the dynamics of epidemics as well as the important distinctions of virulence, resistance and tolerance.

Moving on to case studies the book covers the main ones we’ve all heard about – influenza, HIV, Cholera and Malaria as well as one I’d never heard of which was a fungus in amphibians which has only recently emerged onto the world stage (called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis if you must know!). Each disease in turn is covered with respect to origin, history and what it does to bypass any filters which exist to prevent its spread and each, apart from the amphibian fungus, is looked at for its impact on humanity. All very interesting stuff. Finally the authors look ahead – from 2015 that is – at the emerging and re-emerging diseases that are all too clearly on the horizon with anti-bacterial resistance and the double whammy of habitat destruction and ongoing climate change. Despite the hopes of scientists in the 1970’s we are not going to be disease free for the foreseeable future and should prepare for the inevitable. If nothing else the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has taught us that we were very clearly not prepared for a global pandemic. Luckily for us the overall lethality of this admittedly highly infectious disease has been thankfully quite low in absolute terms. A clearer warning shot cannot, I think, have been heard around the world. Looking back over history we have seen clearly what infectious disease can do to individuals, families and whole civilisations. We very much need to learn from these horrid experiences and up our game. Definitely a must read for anyone interested in current and, no doubt at all, future events. Recommended.        

5 comments:

mudpuddle said...

sound advice, so it will most likely be ignored...

Stephen said...

This one sounds promising. I'm SORELY tempted to buy a game called Bio, Inc which is a kind of medical simulator -- the player has a human patient with various symptoms, and the goal is to figure out by testing and responses to treatment what the patient has, and so ..cure them. I will probably succumb to temptation even though it's more of a time-consuming sit-and-think kind of game, and I STILL haven't figured out how to destroy the world with a zombie virus in Plague, Inc. I even tried copying someone else's successful playthrough, but the RNG is a serious factor.

CyberKitten said...

@ Mudpuddle: The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

@ Stephen: The VSI books are pretty much universally good. After just under 100 read so far I'd say only one was bad and only a few more poor - or not what I was expecting. That's good reading! This one is only 106 pages so is a swift read too.

I looked at Plague Inc which seemed like a scream. Playing the virus rather than the heroic humans is a nice switch around. Still *heavily* into ONI and have even persuaded two of my friends to start playing it too! One has become a bit obsessed by it. 124 hours game play for me so far... [grin]

Judy Krueger said...

Good knowledge to have, I would say.

CyberKitten said...

@ Judy: With my 'butterfly mind' I can sometimes latch onto something I feel a lack of knowledge in and just go for it. With 'the current situation' I certainly feel the need to know more about this sort of thing. Three more to come in this particular blitz.