Critics of the protective measures against the corona pandemic are currently calling for a "reappraisal" of the policies of the past three years. However, they often do not want to focus on how deaths and millions of infections with long-term consequences could have been avoided. Rather, it is a question of which measures may have been too drastic with today's knowledge.
But this is cheap, because especially at the beginning of a pandemic, the level of knowledge is limited – and yet decisions have to be made. Anyone who wants to declare earlier measures superfluous as part of a "reappraisal" should always spell out how many human lives this could have cost.
Because the next pandemic is sure to come. At least that's what the book "The Revenge of Pangolin" by evolutionary biologist Matthias Glaubrecht suggests. The author presents a voluminous and knowledgeable reappraisal of what happened, not in terms of measures, but with the aim of placing the corona pandemic in the history of mankind and drawing lessons on how at least some of the impending pandemics could be prevented or less drastic.
Laboratory accident or not?
At least on the German book market, there is probably no more detailed presentation on the subject. Several hypotheses and conspiracy myths such as a "plandemic" by the Chinese government or influential secret circles are competing. Among the hypotheses to be seriously tested is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could have reached the wildlife market through a laboratory accident at one of the virological institutes in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first superspreader event was recorded. Another theory is that infected animals were slaughtered and sold in this market, from which the virus then jumped to humans. Even if it now reads as if Glaubrecht assumes a laboratory accident, he is apparently inclined to the second thesis.
Meticulously and supported by sources, the author also traces what could have happened before the outbreak in Wuhan, i.e. how the virus got from its actual host animal, bats of the genus Rhinolophus, to us humans. Glaubrecht openly admits that the pangolin that gives the book its name is actually out of the question as an intermediate host, but apparently the temptation for the publisher to put such a melodious animal name on the cover was greater than the fidelity to the facts.
The meandering exploration of the origins of the current pandemic occupies a long first third of the book. Glaubrecht does not spare criticism of the Chinese government's information policy and suggests that the worst might even have been prevented if less secretive action had been taken. Similarly harsh is his criticism of Shi Zhengli, the leading researcher on coronaviruses and bats in China. There are "considerable anomalies and inconsistencies" in their publications, writes Glaubrecht, and one suspects that the clarification of the events in Wuhan will take a very long time.
We have it in our own hands
In the second part, the evolutionary biologist spans the great panorama of the history of epidemics – and does not spare the readers from the horror of earlier times, in which people were exposed to pandemics so ignorantly and helplessly that often there was no one left to bury the dead. The depiction of the Attic plague in the fifth century BC is only brutal. The political side of pandemics shows that there has been a veritable microbial genocide of indigenous inhabitants as part of the European colonization of America.
In addition, Glaubrecht draws attention to epidemics that have never stopped. Tuberculosis has killed more people than any other disease. In the past two thousand years, an estimated one billion people have succumbed to it. Particularly exciting is the presentation of the cholera epidemic in Hamburg at the end of the nineteenth century. It has become "a lesson in what happens when politics ignores scientific findings." For a long time, the merchants of the Hanseatic city prevented hygiene measures for the poor with reference to the costs. At that time, despite the intervention of Robert Koch, 8600 of the 600,000 inhabitants of the city succumbed to the epidemic.
The third part of the book points to the future, and here Glaubrecht has a fanal-like message: If we humans penetrate further into wilderness areas, build roads in rainforests and literally put the animals on the fur, then the number and severity of pandemics will increase. The remaining wilderness areas of the earth keep tens if not hundreds of thousands of dangerous viruses safe from us humans. And in modern German environmental policy, this is one of its most important "ecosystem services". "Why we have it in our own hands" is the name of the last chapter. Glaubrecht diagnoses: "Where biodiversity decreases, the biological causation of infectious diseases increases." The claim that nature conservation is a luxury activity cannot be refuted more clearly.
For all those who have not succumbed to the general corona fatigue, but want to go deeper into the matter, the "Revenge of the Pangolin" with a detailed keyword index is highly recommended. Unfortunately, there are also redundancies that the publisher could have eliminated. After hundreds of pages of pandemonium, the book concludes with the optimistic outlook that knowledge and tools to control the next pandemics are getting better and better. Of course, this requires societies that are also prepared to use these funds.