The Manual on Viruses

The importance of science
Camila is a virologist. She studied her bachelor’s and master’s in molecular
biology at the University in Heidelberg, with a focus on Infectious
Diseases. In the past years she has been working in the Molecular
Virology Department at the Heidelberg University Hospital.
Her research focuses on intestine viruses and immune response, but
since the corona times her laboratory started working on the novel
coronavirus. Apart from her professional background, she has been
living several years in South America. As such, she is able to not only
see the biological, but also the social impact of a new pandemic.
As a virologist, have you seen coming the SARS-Cov-20019 virus?
And did you thought it would spread that much and bring so many
consequences with it?
Yes. Indeed, in our Virology lectures in 2017 we were taught that the risk
of a zoonosis was coming strongly from coronaviruses. In general, scientists
are aware that virus spill over from animal to humans is occurring constantly,
and there is a high risk that these uprising human viruses lead to a pandemic.
Taking in account the environmental impact caused by human beings and
how interconnected the world is due to globalization, the probability of such a
pandemic occurring again in the next decades is very high.
Virologists knew that a new pandemic would have such a strong health impact
and spread as much or even more. However, we were never aware of the economic
impact which is probably as strong as the medical one.
Why do you think that the countries weren’t prepared for this crisis,
even though science was expecting the arrival of this virus?
This is a very good question, and something with which scientist are confronted
everyday not only on this topic. There is a strong miscommunication
between scientists and non-scientists. And sadly, I have to say the fault is
strongly on scientists. We often don’t put the effort in explaining our research
in a simple and understandable way as we stay in our comfort zone with people
that understand our concepts immediately. However, this miscommunication
is not only with non-scientist but also with politicians. And here I have to
say that politicians should be much more involved with science. However, they
don’t show much interest, not even in these very important topics. Furthermore,
few scientists are directly involved in politics. Taken together, the reason
why most countries were not prepared for this pandemic has many different
reasons and one important one is the missing communication.
Since research is super important especially in these cases, how
did the laboratories deal with the lockdown? What effect had it in
ongoing investigation?
As expected, there is a strong shift towards coronavirus investigation. At least
academic research is paid by public money. This means, that the money will
go to what seems to be the most important. Of course, coronavirus research is
essential at this point, however right now there is incredible amounts of money
being shifted from other fields in biology to virology. On a short term this has a
positive impact on virus research, but on a long term many labs working on our
topics including on basic research, which is not directly linked to medicine, will
need to close. These labs are as essential as virology labs as they investigate
the background in biology. Apart from this rather negative aspect, on a positive
side I see that research is being appreciated more in todays society.
122 // PANDEMIC / CORONAVIRUS: A VIRUS IN MODERN TIMES