A Bitter Enemy: Our War with Deadly Infections

The authors planned this book during the Ebola fever epidemic of 2014–2016, and wrote it during the Zika fever outbreak. In the process, they did not forget about the SARS coronavirus epidemic of 2002, the H1N1 influenza outbreak of 2009, and MERS – the coronavirus from 2012. Finally, after all this, the world faced the COVID-19 pandemic. And according to the authors, the next pandemic is sure to come, and then another, and another. We are likely to encounter a new influenza virus that is just as deadly as the 1918–1919 ‘Spanish flu.’ Only this pandemic will unfold in a world with three times more people, where international air travel exists and there are megacities in the third world – ready to explode like gunpowder barrels. The book calls for using the crisis caused by COVID-19 as a lesson and a foundation for preparing for future events so that they do not catch us off guard.