While waiting for solutions and strategies to address the ongoing health, economic, and financial crisis, Ilaria Capua attempts to project her heart and mind beyond this intermediate phase and focus on the causes as well as the opportunities that is conceals. In her illuminating book she tries to explain the essential issues around pandemics to the public trying though to maintain scientific integrity and also trying to explain to people why these viruses should be respected. According to the author, the appearance of SARS-CoV-2 can be considered a stress test capable of measuring the weaknesses of our system. This pandemic is an epocal event we have to learn from. It made us rediscover our earthly dimension and its intrinsic transience, but also the arbitrary way in which society is organized, its scales of values, and the very concept of public health. In other words, it took from us everything we considered certain, indisputable, and revealed it for what it was: nothing more than a choice based on a partial view of things.
We have to change our approach to nature and biodiversity, placing ourselves as guardians rather than invaders to head toward a future less in a hurry, with less cars, less ping-pong air travels and more online meetings . We can use technology as an extraordinary tool to defend social relations even in time of physical distancing. So, if we don’t want to get overwhelmed, we need to consider the signs that are emerging from this historical event, we need to ponder about the aftermath and rethink the world we live in. Because this is what we are headed toward: a new world where there is a lot of room for improvement and for exploring new areas in professional life. A special space is also dedicated to women because “this could be the time that women actually make their way where they deserve to be”.
The Aftermath (Mondadori, 2020)
In bookstores from 26th May 2020
144 pages
Price: € 17,00