“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”, wrote the renowned Spanish philosopher George Santayana. While the COVID-19 pandemic may have taken many by surprise and made us all too aware of the invisible enemies with which we share the planet, the truth is that microorganisms have posed an ever-present danger throughout the history of humanity. With this in mind, author Salvador Macip believes that only by learning the history of the epidemics that have shaped human history we can better prepare ourselves for the next one. “The fact that the general public isn’t fully aware of the role infections have played in the history of humanity, and will keep playing in its future, is one of the reasons that prompted me to write this book”, he explains in the epilogue to his latest work Modern epidemics: from the Spanish flu to COVID-19.
A professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Leicester and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Macip is also an accomplished writer, with nine popular science books published in different languages, in addition to a selection of novels and children's books. Modern epidemics is revised and translated from his earlier work Les Grans Epidèmies Modernes, which was published in Catalan more than a decade ago, and has now been updated to present recent data in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is an informative text in two parts: the first investigating the ways in which we share the world with microorganisms, providing a broad, reader-friendly overview of microbiology and the history of infectious diseases, and the second delving deeper into modern epidemics, many of which continue to be responsible for vast numbers of deaths every year, including influenza, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
As a researcher primarily studying ageing and cancer, Macip, it seems, is perfectly poised to summarise such topics in an accessible way—at once familiar enough with the concepts to present them clearly, but not so deeply immersed in the specialty as to assume an unrealistic level of prior knowledge or, conversely, to patronise the general reader. As such, Modern Epidemics provides authoritative primer on the basics of infectious diseases for anyone looking to learn more about the history of epidemics and understand how we can better prepare ourselves for future events. Indeed, Macip found the enthusiasm of the infectious disease and microbiology experts he talked to in preparation of the book so infectious (no pun intended) that he threw himself into learning everything he could about microorganisms and developed and enduring passion for the subject, even going on to co-author several academic research publications in the area.
In this updated text, Macip recounts how he took the publishers of his earlier work by surprise when he predicted an imminent future pandemic with remarkable prescience, only a few months before the 2009 A H1N1 influenza (swine flu) pandemic. While the publishers at the time were a little incredulous and thought his predictions could be considered alarmist, he explains that “All the experts I had spoken to or read while writing this book agreed that it was inevitable. Everyone who had sufficiently studied the matter came to the same conclusion: it wasn’t a matter of waiting to see if it would happen but when it would happen”.
Although he believes we had an excuse for being taken by surprise back in 2009 because we simply hadn’t experienced an infectious disease of such dimensions, he thinks “the attitude should have changed after the A(H1N1) flu, which could be regarded as the first pandemic of the modern era, the first to have attacked a globalized, frontierless world”. Even so, while the A H1N1 could have provided a useful warning, particularly because it had relatively few consequences, COVID-19 “caught us unawares”. It is with a tangible frustration that he writes “The responses to this second great 21st century world health crisis are similar to those of the first one…namely confusion, panic and uncertainty. Once again mismanaged information has sown distrust among the public”.
Although he is fairly confident that we will end up getting the better of COVID-19, he insists that “There will be more pandemics, and the danger that one of them will be caused by an even more aggressive virus is always going to be present”. This time, he hopes that lessons will be learned. “The conclusions we can draw in 2020 are the same as those reached in 2009. Most importantly: when a new virus appears, rapid, coordinated action is necessary until we understand the extent of the symptoms it's causing, even if they seem mild at first.” And, central to learning these lessons and avoiding being doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, he believes, is that we all need to “make an effort to learn a bit more about microbes”—something he hopes Modern Epidemics will help to achieve.
Reflecting on everything he has learned in his now more than a decade of research into the epidemics that have characterised modern human history, Macip concludes that “We share the earth with microorganisms. In fact, it's their planet.”, and we have to learn to live with that. “If we want to keep living here, we have to learn to set limits. We have the tools and intelligence to do this. So, now let's see if we can.”
