Adnkronos (Adnkronos) – “The relationship between humans and pathogens is an evolutionary story in which we must run ever faster to keep pace with the environment. Viruses and pathogens change much more rapidly than we do, so we must deploy different strategies than theirs. We know their logic: to use us as vehicles for their spread.
We need to be proactive: understand and study them first to develop vaccines, antidotes, and preventive information. Vaccines are indeed the main prevention tool, but they must be combined with the management of ecological and environmental changes to reduce the chances of viruses and bacteria spreading more than they normally would,” explained Telmo Pievani, professor of Philosophy of Biological Sciences in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences at the University of Milan, during the event 'Influenti - Enduring Innovation in Influenza' organized by CSL Seqirus, which preceded the start of the National Congress of the Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health (SItI), which runs until Saturday, October 24, in Genoa.
“Over the last forty years, humans have created situations and environments that are highly favorable to pathogens,” Pievani adds. “We remember all the markets with live and dead animals placed together in the same environment, deforestation, the illegal trade in exotic animals, but also intercontinental air travel and the fact that there are 8 billion human beings, most of whom are concentrated in cities.
If we look at it from the pathogens' perspective, these are all conditions that favor them. Because, as we know, we need to understand how to reduce the likelihood of their spread and, in particular, of their "jumping between species," giving rise to so-called "zoonoses." Intensive farms, for example, for poultry, are also places where many potential pandemics can spread, such as the various strains of avian influenza.
Knowing all this, we must reduce the ecological prerequisites for pandemics: only in this way will we be less likely to face another emergency like the one in 2020."
"Fake news and scientific misinformation," he explains, "can be fought in two ways. First, false news must not only be debunked but also debunked, exposing the mechanisms and tricks that make them so successful. The second is to work "positively," that is, to show the beauty of the scientific method. Its main characteristic, in my opinion, is its unpredictability: very often, in basic research, we look for something and find something else, completely independent, that we weren't looking for. Today's greatest technological innovations," he concludes, "have emerged precisely in this way, through serendipity, and it's extremely fascinating."
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