Jaap Goudsmit
Vrij van Corona
Het begin van een nieuw tijdperk
Observations about the coronavirus crisis by a professor with a can-do attitude
In this book, virologist and epidemiologist Jaap Goudsmit, professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and scientific director of the Human Vaccines Project, describes the facts and fictions among all the stories about the virus, infections and vaccination.
He explains how the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates, possibly becomes more dangerous, why it mainly affects the elderly, how it compares to other viruses and what vaccines there are – always with a keen eye for the names of researchers who matter, but also for scientific controversies and uncertainties. He discusses the roll of aerosols, superspreading events and ‘super shedders’.
Goudsmit ends with a rather hopeful picture of the future: we are, he says, now globally capable of handling pandemics: of identifying the cause, making tests, testing vaccines and making those available. And that is the start of a new era, ‘the immunocene’, in which we must establish that the virus is here to stay and will keep coming back with new variants. And in which we must commit to changing our lifestyle, vaccinating ourselves again each year and building a testing society.
