Читать книгу Viruses: More Friends Than Foes (Revised Edition) - Karin Moelling - Страница 13

Viruses are opportunistic and take advantage of the shortest and fastest way to replicate, by selecting the elderly and other hosts with reduced immunological competence. In fact, not only viruses, but almost all living species are opportunistic, humans included: if we see a bargain in a shop, we buy it whether or not we need it.

Similarly, this is how viruses select big cities with high population densities and full transport vehicles, airplanes, trains, subways and cruise ships. A journey around the globe today takes no more than 24 hours; that is why air traffic was the first to be forbidden, rightly so.

Mobility and population densities are the two major drivers of a pandemic.

Essential factors in combating this are tracing and identification of the spread of infection, the infection chain. One needs to know which series of events and contacts can be reconstructed and how these can be stopped. People involved are put into quarantine. “Social distancing” was performed in China on an unprecedented scale, with 50 million people staying at home despite the New Year festival, a traditional occasion for family reunions. This strategy turned out to be very successful. Yet it was a specifically Chinese decision, because there are so many skyscrapers in a small area, with thousands of people per building, and so many houses in close proximity, are rare elsewhere. In China it would have been impossible to allow people to move freely without incurring high risk of viral spread. Even just using an elevator would have spread the infection. This lock-in procedure was imitated in many big cities in Europe such as Rome, Paris, Madrid and Vienna, without the same need. Was that a misunderstood imitation of China? Could social distancing not have been maintained in Europe by less drastic measures? Germany did not follow such strong restrictions and allowed outdoor activities. Other factors may have contributed to the disease’s severity in other countries, such as smog (which can be quite severe in China‘s big cities, as I noticed during my stay in Beijing: the “Peking cough”). The smog is attributable to dust particles, and these may enhance viral infections. In Lombardy in Italy, too, air pollution may have contributed to the high incidence of casualties.