Book Review

Jonathon Harper - 8 November 2021

Reviewed

Covid-19 The Pandemic That Should Never Have Happened - by Debra MacKenzie 2020 (available on Amazon)

MacKenzie is a journalist who has covered infectious diseases for New Scientist for several decades. She certainly canvases expert opinion very thoroughly.

This book gives a very good recent history of coronaviruses and influenzas, and our efforts to control outbreaks. I learnt a few new facts – that is I was convinced by Mackenzie that these things are either facts (for all practical purposes true) or highly likely to be true given what the consensus of experts are telling us as reported by MacKenzie:

• China already had an early warning system when covid-19 broke out in Wuhan. The local officials failed to trigger the alarm when faced with clear evidence that human to human transmission was occurring.
• Big Pharma cannot afford the huge costs involved in producing vaccines and treatments for viruses until it is clear we need millions of doses. By then, it may be too late to prevent a pandemic. So she is clear that governments must invest ahead of time. Trump had cut off this kind of funding in the USA before the outbreak.
• Covid-19 probably came from fruit bats, possibly through as traditional Chinese Medicine that uses bat droppings for an eye product (I refer to unproven “treatments” as products). Or, as a result of our encroachment into wild environments where bats used to live further away from humans.
• NIPAH is another bat borne virus is a likely candidate for the next pandemic, which I’m sorry to say may not be all that far into the future according to Mackenzie. NIPAH has a higher mortality rate than the Covid-19 coronavirus (NIPAH is a Henipavirus). Should this virus acquire particular mutations, which have already been identified, it could become very contagious.

So although the book was likely cobbled together quickly in order to stay current; and it has a little repetition in places, I think it is a good source of background information to help understand the current pandemic.