Understanding the virus
The Hindu
Five books on the coronavirus
Ever since the first outbreak of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have been probing its origins. While many believe that the virus jumped from animals to humans, others believe that the coronavirus may have escaped from a lab in China. There is nothing conclusive yet.
Dorothy H. Crawford’s pre-COVID book, Viruses: A Very Short Introduction (OUP) explains “how clever these entities really are”. Talking about killer viruses like Ebola, Zika and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), she wonders whether we can ever “live in harmony with viruses”, considering the ways in which we need to adapt to prevent emerging viruses with devastating consequences.
In his new book, Invisible Empire: The Natural History of Viruses (Viking), Pranay Lal delves deeper , explaining that among all microbes, “viruses are possibly the most enigmatic and certainly the most feared.” But Lal argues that we must find ways to make peace with viruses because we cannot outnumber or outmatch them. “Viruses are a part of us. We cannot eliminate them without making ourselves extinct.” This past year, he writes, nature has been telling us that we must slow down our greed machine – “we need an anthropo-pause.”