Nordic Life Science 1
arly on you warned about the causes of the diseas
e and you have written about the three enemies of epidemics: ignorance, denial and complacency. Would you say that the world has been able to handle those enemies so far during this pandemic? ”Some countries, especially those that experienced SARS, understood both the human and economic cost of an infection like this, acting quickly and avoiding the ignorance, denial and complacency that would only increase the number of deaths. Other countries, such as European countries, were slow to respond but eventually came to understand what was at risk and avoided the three major dangers. Unfortunately, many countries in the new world, Russia, India, and the Americas fell into the traditional response of denial, ignorance, and complacency. Now, they are suffering the consequences. One thing I would like to acknowledge is how serious the infection is. As many as 80% of those who are infected have symptoms, 20% of those infected require hospitalization, and of this 20%, there are people who require intensive care. Depending on where you are, between 1-5% of those infected die. Extrapolate that to what will soon be 200,000 cases per day. That means 160,000 people will fall ill, 40,000 people will require hospitalization, and 8,000 people in the world will require intensive care. Somewhere between 2,000– 10,000 people will die each and every day as a result of this infection. I do not believe that people comprehend the magnitude of the tragedy that has befallen us through the three evils: ignorance, complacency, and denial.” We have experienced SARS and MERS recently, why do you think we were so unprepared? ”Preparation requires understanding, forethought, organization, and some expense. No government took those necessary steps. Since World War II, for the most part, we have been privileged to be spared of global pandemics. HIV is the exception, but even with HIV the impact of the disease was felt unequally across the world, which was also the case for other infections, such as Ebola and Zika. There was a belief in many parts of the world that widespread disease “would not happen to us.” It is a lack of imagination. Many people warned both publicly and in publications that such an event was inevitable, but no country took those warnings seriously enough. There is a deeper reason why we were so unprepared – our understanding of infectious disease, biology, and science in general is limited and most people have not learned the scientific, technical, and medical realities of modern life. I would argue that this should be a wake-up call to restructure our education systems, so that no one is left in the depths of ignorance of the natural phenomena that imperil all of our lives at all times.” You were one of the first to recognize the danger of AIDS. Could you describe some of your experiences and lessons learned from working with this pandemic? ”AIDS was a more difficult issue to bring to the public than this virus, because it was sexually transmitted. In most countries there are serious taboos and restrictions in discussing sexual behavior. Only two countries, Brazil and Thailand, responded quickly and well, and those two countries have less inhibitions about discussing the sexual aspects of human nature. Unfortunately, in this epidemic, of those two countries, only Thailand has responded well. It was also much easier in the AIDS epidemic to focus on small marginalized populations; people who were gay, male homosexuals, and Haitians. It was difficult for people to imagine that this could be a rapid heterosexual di-sease. In fact, a book called The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS was published, showing just how much some people refused to believe it was a risk to them. NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG 73