The history and future of pandemics.
We live in a world of viruses. A single successful cross-species transmission anywhere in the world is enough to unleash a new epidemic.
Against the backdrop of the new strain of corona virus, this book discusses how pandemics come about and why so-called zoonosis is occuring with greater frequency: new illnesses, which leap across from animals to people and can become extremely dangerous. Because even if we like to believe that Covid-19 is unique, we live in a world of viruses. Epidemics are not natural catastrophes like earthquakes. They don't just drop out of the sky. A single successful cross-species transmission anywhere in the world is enough to unleash a new pandemic.
Philipp Kohlhöfer, who works for the research network Zoonotic Contagious Diseases, presents here an unsettling, but, at the same time, optimistic book. He shadows leading scientists such as Christian Drosten as they search for the origin of pandemics, observes them at work on viruses, such as MERS and Ebola, and in their attempts to discover the next pandemic before it breaks out. His journey takes him through German-speaking countries as well as to West Africa and Asia. To laboratories, museums and the rain forest. In the process, the book tells of the greatest weapon that humanity has in the struggle against a new kind of pathogen: science.
