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Star author writes corona book to reassure you with numbers

Writer Paolo Giordano, best known for his bestseller The loneliness of the prime numbers, wrote an essay on the corona crisis in six days and nights: In times of contamination.

Giordano was originally a physicist. In these uncertain times he returns to his old field; figures and models give him something to hold on to. He also wants to pass this on to his readers.

“I am not afraid that I will get sick,” said Giordano in his essay. “For what then? For everything that can change the corona outbreak. I’m afraid I discover that the civilization I know is a house of cards. All that is being erased. But I’m also afraid of the opposite: that if the fear soon gone, everything has stayed with the old. “

The shock of the crisis came to him only after a few weeks, he says from his home in Rome where he is quarantined. “The first corona outbreak in the north was at the end of February in Italy. We saw the images of hospitals in Bergamo, Brescia and Piacenza. No one was prepared for this. Since then I have been unable to think of anything else.”

Calm numbers

The starting point of the book was for the writer of mathematics. “As a physicist, numbers have always given me peace of mind. I hope to convey some of that calmness to others by providing insight into the models underlying a pandemic.”

In his essay he examines concepts such as R0, which can now be heard in the news every day. R0 indicates how many people are infected by someone who has the virus. With corona, that number is 2 to 3 according to many models, in the Netherlands it has now fallen below 1 due to all measures.

On average, Corona’s R0 is higher than the Spanish Flu, which claimed an estimated 20 to 100 million lives around 1918, but lower than, for example, measles worth 15.

Understanding this matter, Giordano thinks, increases understanding and understanding of the exceptional measures that have been taken worldwide. However, he is disappointed at how different all countries react, while the virus and the timeline itself knows no boundaries. “This is a pandemic, and therefore a worldwide problem. You cannot combat that with local solutions.”

Lemon Tree

He pays special attention to the aggressive way in which we treat our environment. “Tropical logging, intensive livestock farming and the many forest fires release unknown micro-organisms that are looking for ‘a new home’.”

He does not want to make a direct link between the origin of the coronavirus and environmental factors, but he does write in his book: “The spread of the virus makes it unambiguously clear how much our world is globalized. In times of contamination, we are one organism, one community. “

Back to Rome. During his quarantine, the writer had the same view of the roofs of that city for a month. “Spring is coming on my balcony. New leaves suddenly bloom on our sick lemon tree. In these times, such small signs of hope suddenly become very important. I have never looked at the tree as often as now.”

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