Deadliest Enemy by Michael Osterholm. John Murray/Hachette India. Pages 368. Rs 699
Book Title: Deadliest Enemy
Author: Michael Osterholm
Aditi Tandon
“Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic. We don’t know which of the influenza strains will emerge this time or whether it will be something we have never seen before….”
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This incredible warning was issued in 2017 by American infectious diseases expert Michael Osterholm, when he first published Deadliest Enemy, to awaken the world to the pressing public health challenges of our times and warn nation states to prepare ahead.
The prophetic book, co-authored by Mark Olshaker, is back in business amid a raging Covid-19, the global flu pandemic that had topped Osterholm’s health risk list way back in 2017. No lessons have been learned and like the author had predicted — unless we are prepared, the next pandemic would be like containing the wind. And so it is.
But Osterholm has the answers which his book details in depth as he draws upon 40 plus years of experience in public health to project a future where coronavirus epidemic threats will become graver, failed antibiotic efficacy a reality and bioterror an imminent danger. Unless, of course, we act to keep the unthinkable from becoming the inevitable.
In its sum and substance, Deadliest Enemy presents the face of infectious disease in the modern world and tells people what to do to fight it.
Osterholm’s endeavour through 342 pages is to give the world a direction and argue for bold, ambitious leaps of faith, the kind that change the course of histories. His solution to future pandemics is a 21st-century game-changing vaccine that protects against various strains of the influenza virus with one shot sufficient every five to 10 years.
Deadliest Enemy makes a compelling case for enhanced global research on flu vaccines along the lines of HIV, with the mainstay argument being plain and simple — flu pandemics go back to antiquity and there is no reason why the world is not going to have more.
Pandemic influenza has happened at least 30 times since the sixteenth century and the modern world presents all the ingredients for its imminent return — global interdependence, vast and rapid travel, people, pigs and birds living in proximity — all in all, a world that’s a hyper mixing vessel. The book calls for the creation of Manhattan Project-like programme to secure the new-age influenza vaccine, only this time the project need not be secret. Another point of deliberation in this highly relevant book is the urgent need for WHO reforms. The issue resonates even more today with China facing questions over its initial cover up of the Covid-19 outbreak.
The book is gripping and replete with startling revelations on how the world knew enough of the looming dangers of an influenza pandemic but did nothing about it.
A UN Panel report after the Ebola crisis noted, “The Panel was very concerned to learn that the emergence of a highly pathogenic influenza virus, which could rapidly result in millions of deaths and cause major social, economic and political disruption, is not an unlikely scenario.”
No action followed. Osterholm shows just what is needed — how to talk less and do more against humankind’s deadliest enemy — infectious diseases.
He also discusses why science must strive harder when faced with crises like Drs Bill Foege and DA Henderson did in the 1960s to spare millions yet unborn of the horrors of smallpox. Perhaps it is best for the world to see Covid-19 as an opportunity to change the course of history, again.
Osterholm’s book drives home this very message of collective resilience. The message goes: “You can’t out-compete microbes from the evolutionary standpoint, you have to outthink them.”
