Two urgent and fascinating accounts from the frontlines show how scientists succeeded, and failed, at saving us from Covid-19
What did you do in the pandemic, Mummy and Daddy? Memoirs by battered veterans of the Covid-19 wars are likely to be a growth industry in the coming year. These two, among the first, are both revelations in their own way. Vaxxers, by the two women who led the development of the AstraZeneca vaccine, is a tale of hard work and victory against steep odds, a unique insight into vaccines generally – especially eye-opening, I suspect, for anyone worrying that Covid jabs were made too fast, or that we don’t know what’s in them (the book includes a list of ingredients, with explanations).
Spike, a top scientific insider’s account of the political handling, and mishandling, of England’s pandemic, is a different tale entirely. That tale isn’t over, either, as Boris Johnson was determined to lift all pandemic controls, despite rising cases and scientists’ appalled protests. His insistence on making Covid control an individual choice – an absurdity when infectious disease is by its very nature profoundly a collective problem– simply confirms one of Spike’s main messages: from the start, people died unnecessarily in England because political leaders rejected any science that didn’t suit their extreme libertarian ideology.
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