Virus world – about snot and super spreaders by Marc ter Horst and Wendy Panders
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Do you know where the word ‘quarantine’ comes from? It is derived from the Venetian word for forty. In the mid-14th century, 75 million people died from the plague, caused by a bacteria in rodent fleas. At the time, ships had to wait 40 days before entering Venice harbor to rule out the possibility of the crew developing symptoms of the deadly plague.
Although this little piece of information is about a bacterium, the rest of the recently published children’s book ‘Virus world – about snot and super spreaders’ is full of discoveries and facts from the world of viruses. With a leading role, of course, for the new coronavirus.
Author Marc ter Horst wrote the text, Wendy Panders made comical and illuminating illustrations. You only have to see the picture and you understand what a reproduction number of 2 means, or what a super spreader is. The duo previously made the children’s book ‘Palms on the North Pole’ about climate change, the translation rights of which have been sold to ten countries. Give them subjects such as earth, nature or climate and what you get is a colorful, informative book with light-hearted stories about quite complicated subjects.
Detective
In the spring of 2020, author Marc ter Horst became fascinated by pandemics and microscopic pathogens during the first lockdown. Graduated in literature, he certainly has no (bio)medical background, but his extensive research into viruses, and how they sometimes transfer from animals to humans, does not detract from this. There is nothing to criticize about the virological accuracy, which was also ensured by the most famous virologist in the Netherlands, Marion Koopmans. She read the text and wrote the foreword.
Let’s talk about the cover, in the color of snot full of antibodies against intruders. It has a funny detail. You can ‘feel’ the shape of the different virus particles. Run your fingers over it and you’ll feel the protrusions of a coronavirus or the long string of the Ebola virus.
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‘Virus World’ is an informative book that answers all the obvious questions about viruses, but packed in historical stories and adventures. Each of the six chapters begins with a virus story, about SARS, HIV, Ebola or measles, written down like a detective. In 2003, for example, patients suddenly appeared in Singapore and Toronto with complaints that indicate pneumonia. But existing drugs don’t work. A new disease! As in a whodunit film, Ter Horst traces the tracks to unmask the source: in this case the SARS virus.
Also for adults
Every now and then it is quite a spicy book for children from the age of ten. It contains words such as aerosols, immunity, incubation period and ACE2 receptor. And when Ter Horst writes that people lived to an average age of 31 around 1900, because of high infant mortality, the reader is given no further explanation. He must see for himself that once people have passed the dangerous stage of childhood, they did indeed become a lot older than 31.
As is often the case with informative children’s books, adults can also learn something from them. Take those new corona variants that you hear about all the time, which are more contagious and spread faster. You know, that British, Brazilian, Indian or South African variant. The virus mutates and mutates and becomes more and more dangerous. But there can also be variants that make us less ill, points out Ter Horst. This is useful for the virus to spread. An infected person who is less sick walks around with his snot nose longer. In this way, he can infect more people than when he is stuffy in bed. Maybe after the crisis we will be left with those milder variants, just like we now have the ‘normal’ cold viruses.
As expected, this book is mainly about the biomedical and epidemiological view of viruses, with explanations about our immune system, immunity, vaccines and copying errors in the RNA. But there are also stories of historical epidemics, warnings about the danger of fake news, and links between virus outbreaks, climate change and our modern way of life (flying, eating meat, cutting trees). Nice to broaden the field of view. In this way, the young reader gains an important insight at the end: living in a virus world is partly in our own hands when it comes to preventing epidemics.
Virus world – about snot and super spreaders, Marc ter Horst & Wendy Panders, Gottmer, 128 pages, € 19.99.
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