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November 29, 2021 – Talking about dreaded diseases may not be your idea for a fun holiday conversation, but Lydia Kang, Ph.D., co-author of Patient Zero: A curious history of the world’s worst diseases, thinks it should be.
After all, we are in the middle of a pandemic, and this is not the first time we have encountered a pathogen. We sat down with Kang, a primary care physician in Omaha, North America, to find out what inspired her to write this book, which includes compelling human stories behind outbreaks such as smallpox, bubonic plague, polio, HIV and COVID-19, and why it is a must read.
WebMD: It must have been surreal to write a book about terrible diseases during a pandemic.
Can: When my co-author, Nate Pederson, and I decided to write the book, it was before the pandemic. Then something started to seep into Wuhan, and we thought, “Maybe this will end in the book.” We had no idea that this would become a global pandemic.
WebMD: The amazing thing is that COVID-19 is not the main focus of your book.
Can: That’s right. Our book is not only focused on COVID-19. It’s about the interactions between humans and infectious diseases and the fun / interesting history of science behind it. We cover the mad cow, measles and all the quackery that surrounds the spread of the disease, from mercury and bloodletting to hydroxychloroquine.
WebMD: What do you want people to know about the COVID-19 pandemic and the bats?
Can: Don’t hate bats. I think this is again one of those really classic beliefs that all these cases of zoonoses come from bats and that these animal species are terrible. This accusation game is not useful. These animals have the right to be here. It is not necessarily their fault that coronaviruses are boiling inside them. Bats have been living with these really weird, weird viruses for a long time, but that doesn’t kill them. In fact, we have a lot to learn from them.
WebMD: What worries you about what’s ahead of you in terms of infectious diseases?
Can: Once COVID-19 calms down and may become an endemic virus, just like the flu, there may be another. The majority of new infections (more than 60%) are zoonoses, which means that they come from animal sources. These overflows are trying to happen all the time. We are always overwhelmed with the possibility of other viruses, and although most cannot be transmitted from person to person or replicated in humans, this one in a million appeared, and it was probably COVID-19.
WebMD: How can we be prepared for the next one?
Can: This is a huge wake-up call for different countries to be more prepared. COVID-19 was bad, but it could have been worse. So what we need to do is push the vaccines out quickly – we have great technology – and we need to communicate better with other countries sooner than we did this time.
WebMD: Should this book be a must-read?
Can: That would be amazing. In one of our reviews, a writer wrote that this book would be well placed in a library. I would like to see it in the classrooms and in the college curricula, which cover the relationship between people with infectious diseases. Sometimes science can be dry and difficult to understand. We tried to make our book something readable, somewhat fun and important.
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