Since ancient times Human beings have never stopped fighting against global pandemics. As far as the plague and smallpox, as recently as AIDS, there are many records of infectious diseases in history. These struggle histories are not only an important part of human civilization, but also a testimony of technological progress. Thanks to the rapid development of modern medicine (vaccines, antibiotics, and antiviral drugs), the painful experience brought about by these pandemics is huge. To a certain extent it was forgotten by us residents of the 21st century.
In the post-coronavirus era, this immunology book clearly and concisely explained the mechanism and evolution of "viruses, immunity, and vaccines", and can "satisfy the public's desire for a popular explanation of COVID-19." In particular, through mathematical models and various deductions for the current public health decision-making and implementation of the anti-epidemic, this book provides a think tank and administrative theoretical guidance. Based on the rigorous truth-seeking and interdisciplinary development of medical experience, it serves civilized ethics. To meet the needs of human well-being, a feasible strategy is proposed:
First, it is absolutely necessary to diagnose the epidemic as early as possible, and prepare or carry out a large-scale virus surveillance in order to establish a sound epidemiological model in time. Now based on the continuous optimization of synthetic biology, sensing, nanotechnology and equipment engineering, many effective portable operation detection methods can be created and innovated, which helps to quickly screen the epidemic population and its infection rate, and monitor the development of the epidemic in real time, as much as possible. Minimize the spread of the virus. This requires scientists, engineers, and the public and administrative leaders to collaborate with humanists and social scientists.
Secondly, the design and development of vaccines will face more severe challenges. The book points out: Combining life sciences, physics, engineering, and medicine can create a way to rationally design vaccines against highly mutated viruses. Complicated and clever calculation methods can be applied to a large number of data sets related to virus sequences and structures, and can be combined with progressing clinical disease data. This method allows us to quickly determine the viral targets hit by the vaccine-induced immune response to eliminate the virus's mutation ability. The book believes that such a vaccine not only "can protect us against different strains of mutated viruses", even "only one injection (or several times, depending on the protection period) of the vaccine in a person's life is enough". Next, there are quite professional and practical analysis and suggestions in the book on issues such as vaccine production or antiviral drug research and development of new biological materials.
What attracts readers’ attention and is worthy of in-depth exploration is the series of original ideas in the book that advocate "safer living spaces, workplaces and hospitals": for example, the transmission methods and mechanisms of the disease and its relationship with the host's physiology and environment Only with a basic understanding can "provide information for the design and transformation of housing, workplace and hospital environments to minimize spread." This can only be achieved by combining fluid dynamics, aerosol science, optical sensing, signal processing, virology, and epidemic monitoring methods. The key is to realize that the above-mentioned vision is not completely "out of reach"; it is likely to be achievable if there is sufficient investment to advance it. Therefore, in order to carry out the necessary research, development and production, a coordination plan of "government departments-private enterprises-scientific research institutions" is needed. Due to the continuous recruitment of students and young medical workers from various disciplines and even cross-disciplines, "those scientific research that can produce new discoveries and new inventions" continue to be carried out, and the "investment" of this type of research will also "cultivate" A generation of leading talents" is expected to build a "world with stronger resistance to pandemics", while also generating many other social benefits and bringing "high returns" to the world economy. For example, the "Human Genome Project" with an investment of US$3 billion in the United States has created 280,000 jobs and more than US$6 billion in taxes.
In short, all countries need to unite and cooperate to find new and better ways to predict and respond to future epidemics. Human beings are more closely related because of the common "anti-epidemic", and we live and die together.
