Review - How Contagion Works

Here is our first Guest Literature Review post for the 15 Minute Forum Blog written by Terry Mackie. 

Guest Literature Review

How Contagion Works is a great contribution to our present wretched human condition. Paolo Giordano is my kind of physicist. He explains complex science with exceptional art. His English translator Alex Valente deserves huge credit. This team are born educators.

Giordano teaches us with real confidence about contagion in the modern world and its accursed mathematical diabolism. He explains within very few words how a virus like Cov-2 (his neat term) originates and spreads, causing the pandemic called Covid-19. He relates his analysis to straightforward maths and physics that I followed without trouble. Along the way he weaves his explanatory narrative through his own shattering Italian experience. You can feel the pain, fear and no little despair throughout his counterpoints of science, his Italian experience and behavioural economics. And he does all this without jargon or academic condescension. He tells us plainly how the virus can be defeated by human sacrifice and patience. He trades on faith and hope, ultimately. He believes man can overcome his own folly by collective knowledge and discipline.

The second part of the book develops more big picture thinking. Giordano knows about global disease, climate change and media manipulation. He maintains cogency and coherence. He gets behind the genesis of the disease and casts his eye to the future. He is an unashamed moralist: the best scientists always are. But he doesn’t preach. He marshals his sculpted arguments with acuity and civility. He does castigate mankind for Cov-2 but he rejects blame of governments or nations. He decidedly holds President Trump in contempt. I think that’s just following good logic...

This ‘book’, it is £2.63 and 99p on Kindle, and in truth no bigger than a pamphlet, is a must-read. We are all in this pandemic, it’s a global fact, like climate change, so we all have to learn. It’s a brilliantly organised and amazingly educational work. If I were a headteacher of any school I would buy a copy for every member of staff. If I were running a secondary school I would also buy a copy for every learner over 15. I bought two copies, one to keep, one for my friend Sunny who is one of Giordano’s Ultra Susceptibles, as he is a cancer survivor. Sunny loves life, learning and hope. This little gem has all those great human qualities - and proper science is its foundation.

Stop listening to countless TV experts. Forget your newspaper know-alls. How Contagion Works is what you really need and it takes just 60 minutes to read. Giordano has invented as near a potential bookish vaccine as possible in record time. We all owe this Italian scientist grazie molto.

Terry Mackie