MAIN IDEA:

This book looks at humans and their environment from a somewhat non-standard point of view. In this view, a human is not some stand-alone object surrounded by an environment, but rather an integral part of this environment: “Our bodies are colonized by so many microbes that our cells (about 10 trillion total) are outnumbered by our microbial inhabitants by a factor of ten (about 100 trillion total). The microbiota of our bodies is incredibly diverse, with thousands of species of bacteria and fungi that collectively express 4.4 million genes, compared to our meager 21,000-gene genome. As science writer and ecologist Alanna Collen noted in her excellent primer to the human microbiota 10% Human, genetically we aren’t even 10% human, it’s actually more like 0.5%.”

From the moment of birth, a human organism builds complex relationships with other biological objects, some of which are necessary for survival and some impeding it. The book reviews multiple cases of pandemics and epidemics, especially the last one COVID when political and ideological interference led to catastrophic mismanagement of the society’s response to it.

MY TAKE ON IT:

In addition to the general assessment of a human as a biological object in constant interaction with other biological objects, this book is also a very good and thoroughly convincing presentation of what went wrong with COVID-19. However, I think that it is not enough. The very notion that politics could be involved in any way, shape, and form in scientific affairs: promoting some ideas and suppressing others is not just deeply disturbing but dangerous. The danger comes from two directions: one is unjustified expenses to implement scientifically and technologically invalid measures such as windmills to fight an overblown thread of global warning and another one, even more dangerous – use of the state power to force people to comply with clear meaningless and even harmful things, such as vaccination with poorly tested vaccines with the protection of corporation from legal responsibility for failure to assure the safety of these vaccines. In the first case, the damage is economic, decreasing the general welfare of the population. Still, in the second case, it threatens freedom and even the health of the population, which could potentially cause such a response that could undermine the stability of society. I doubt that the American elite fully understands the consequences of their actions of suppressing real science to benefit scientific bureaucrats, but these consequences will occur regardless of their understanding or lack thereof.