In this post I give my own opinion, not that of any organization.
This book is by my knowledge only published in Dutch, but I still want to share the general ideas with you.
Corona Free – The Beginning of a New Era by Jaap Goudsmit
Contents
A new concept is argued: the immunocene.
The starting point is a misunderstanding: coronaviruses have been around since time immemorial. Everyone remembers SARS. That spread slowly, although it was quite deadly.
In other cases (variants), when it was highly contagious, it was no worse than a simple cold. However, the current variant brings the worst of both worlds: highly contagious and deadly.
But then there was another argument to be mistaken: China has masses of experience with viruses, and their public health is very highly organized. Reasons to think it wouldn’t affect us.
What experience did we have in the West before? An experience with a completely different virus: AIDS. That wasn’t taken seriously at first. It happened then as it does now: the same questions are being asked. Where does it come from? How does it enter our body? How does it spread? What about risky behaviour? Are there any hot spots of infection? If so, how important are they?
In addition, the WHO warns again and again with every virus outbreak: is it a shepherd who shouts too much “wolf”? In any case, the West did not listen. In doing so, one may wonder where our sense of superiority over nature comes from.
But nature takes its revenge implicitly: the more it is repressed by man, the more deadly man comes into contact with more and more deadly viruses. What can be used by the virus for this are animal cells that have about the same or the same cell receptors as we humans. That may also be the case now with this virus.
Viruses & positive effect
These outbreaks of viruses, more specifically flu viruses, had the positive effect that a lot of research was done on (flu) viruses. As early as 2015, more knowledge of viruses led to warnings about bat viruses. Viruses were mapped, but in the end it remained and remains to be seen where the coming pandemic will come from. However, the question is not so much whether we can predict the next disease, but which diseases we give the chance to jump from humans to animals. Or what opportune situations can occur for the virus where this can happen. So it’s not surprising that we know so little about the virus that became the pandemic, at the time. What has been a long time coming was the measure of social distancing. Draconian measures to stop the spread came far too late for the West.
Lessons & questions
An important lesson that we can certainly learn is the importance of a good environment to protect people. This is the link between corona and nature conservation: clean air, water and food are essential.
One of the questions we need to ask ourselves is whether, based on mutations, there will be viruses in the population that are resistant to neutralizing and protective antibodies, or to antiviral drugs such as remdesivir.
By doing a lot of tests, we were able to estimate how quickly the virus spread.
Meanwhile, there are Brazilian, South African, UK variants. The questions that arose were why these variants spread faster, and whether this is a danger to the usefulness of the vaccines. There, too, it’s a lot of looking at coffee grounds.
Unknowns
The fact that it was unknown how the virus spreads, and among whom it spreads, and what circumstances provoked its spread, caused the different countries to emphasize different measures. The UK, for example, originally planned to make everyone sick. Over time, it became clear worldwide that airborne spreading, in addition to droplets, was more common than previously thought. This is one of the reasons for the ban on group gatherings. So it was imposed to keep a distance, to only gather outside, and not to make physical contact.
Rules – imposed or sensitized
But besides the idea that the rules, as they are imposed, should be enforced, there is something to be said for the rules being more sensitized than just enforcement. Perhaps that’s a better strategy against super-spreaders. Because there were events in the beginning, and big events are easily superspreader events. And perhaps super-spreaders are the biggest contributor to the spread of the virus, is one of the possible advancing insights. So we have to make sure to adjust the circumstances of events.
Question: why this virus hits the elderly so hard
An important question that occupies the author is why this virus hits the elderly so hard and small children hardly at all.
This question seems almost obsolete with the arrival of the UK variant, but there are some ideas that I continue to find important in the chapter.
The first is the idea behind the definition of excess mortality. This literally means the additional number of deaths on top of the number of deaths observed under normal conditions during the same period. The definition used by the WHO is that mortality that is attributable to a crisis.
The importance of looking at excess mortality as a measure of the severity of the epidemic is that it gives a more accurate picture than the proven number of deaths with covid19 among the members. The latter is influenced by the accuracy of the tests, but also by the number of deaths due to untreated diseases because the healthcare system is flooded with covid19 cases.
It is also important that with age, there is less performance of their immune system. But other risk factors also seem to play a more important role than age-related diseases, such as a person’s BMI, diabetes, high blood pressure.
For people in general, for the elderly in particular, it is important to be fit as the best factor to fight the disease. That means: the right diet and exercise.
One of the possibly erroneous assumptions in the beginning was that the schools were very intensely responsible for the spread of the disease. This now seems to be outdated: the schools appear to follow social evolution rather than lead it.
An answer to the question of who it is who lights whom, it turned out to be mainly the peers who infected each other.
Are vaccines our only hope?
When asked whether vaccines are our only hope, it must be said that every virus acts differently, also in terms of target groups and spread within them. So we have to anticipate that. This can be done, among other things, by building mathematical models.
The aim of the vaccinations is to build herd immunity. An important question is when it is ethically responsible to achieve this by collectively becoming ill. So perhaps it is a correct interpretation of the unspoken answer that the virus “is here to stay”.
One of the things that occurs with the vaccinations is that there are people who do not want to be vaccinated. The question that then arises is how we can reduce this. This could be done, for example, by giving people who have been vaccinated benefits, e.g. the possibility of air travel on presentation of a vaccination identity card. But it also appears that trust in the information and the source of the information are more important than the importance of safety of the vaccine itself. So there are correlations of trust and distrust with other things. But causalities are not clear.
Currently, there are also several types of tests available. This raises the question of whether we are evolving into a home testing world. After all, self-tests now seem to be coming into vogue. This brings almost a prevention policy per patient in sight.
Further thoughts
Furthermore, since 8 May 2021, people have been talking in terms of relaxations. The author warns of the risk of new superspreading. The problem here is not just the burden on hospitals. After all, the problem that we have been very much confronted with is that the economy has come to a standstill. The testing policy could be a help to be able to open the hospitality industry etc.
One of the conclusions, when we see what this pandemic has caused in society, is a lesson in humility. Risk factors that could be seen in the USA are: origin, language, being unemployed, working on a farm, living in the countryside, not being insured, being poor. A number of these factors do not apply in the Netherlands, nor in Belgium. However, our factors are partly culturally and socially determined. However, a good lifestyle can protect both preventively and correctively. There are also important risk factors independent of lifestyle, such as temperature, wind, humidity, pollen and particulate matter. There is always the question of whether it is purely a matter of correlations or also of causalities.
One conclusion is therefore that the government’s policy for a healthy society is also important in order to increase prevention.
By way of an epilogue, Corona Free – The Beginning of a New Era asks whether we as humanity are at the beginning of the immunocene. He advocates approaching data with artificial intelligence. He also states that vaccinations will continue to be necessary, because immunity will only be there for a year. In addition to vaccines and other means, he believes that a quick full lockdown also seems to offer an answer. We saw the fastest vaccine creation ever in this pandemic. By making a comparison between this pandemic and the Delta Works after the flood of 1953, he argues that budgets must be made available by governments. The question is whether this should and can be done at EU level. The efforts should go smoothly x 10.
Title: Vrij van corona – Het begin van een nieuw tijdperk, Author: Jaap Goudsmit, Publisher: Pluim, ISBN: 9789083054278