The Book Page: Breathless -- Nothing About The Bakken -- October 11, 2022

If I place any more notes on this book, it will be at this site. 

The book:

Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus, David Quammen, 2022

I completed the book last week over three days and am starting to re-read it for the second time (my third reading). It's a very good book but I'm not sure I would recommend it. This is a tough subject. It's hard to find "unbiased" articles / books about the subject. If you don't believe me, just do a google search. LOL.

The first chapter was a page turner, but then the next several chapters dragged. I scanned through these chapters quickly. But then, when getting back to the subject at hand, it became a great book again. I ended up reading the book from back to front, the second reading. The chapters were short, and that made it easy to read the last chapter first, then the second-to-last chapter, then the third-to-last chapter, then the previous chapter, and so on.

Considering how much I thought I knew about the subject, I was surprised by all I did not know and some very, very interesting insights from the author.

Disappointments:

• on several occasions, the author is very, very flippant;
• the author is very weak with the biology in some cases; most notable -- his apparent lack of interest in ACE2 which is key to the infection;
• a snide remark about the US intel community absolutely unnecessary;
  
• no illustrations; there were opportunities for some great illustrations, particularly the "tripod" spikes; I find is amazing that a book of this nature: no illustrations (most likely to keep costs down)
  

The best reason for reading the book: it provides a great foundation for understanding the disease, and the seriousness of the coronavirus. 

With regard to providing a great foundation for understanding the disease, it allowed me to better understand this article:

"Myocarditis With Covid-19 mRNA Vaccines," Circulation AHA, July 20, 2021. Link here.

Along that line, another important article:

"Sudden Cardiac Death in Athletes," NCBI-NLM-NIH-GOV, April-June 2016. Link here.

I'm happy to see that "we've" discovered the cause for these sudden cardiac deaths in athletes back in 2016, the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine.

Back to mRNA vaccines. Look at the date this article was published:

"mRNA Vaccines -- A New Era In Vaccinology," Nature, "Nature Reviews Drug Discovery," January 12, 2018. Link here.

And, from Forbes, a two-series article, just published:

"Two Are Better Than One: Expanding Our Coviid-19 Vaccine Antigens," William A. Haseltine, October 3, 2022. Link here.
"Supercharging mRNA Vaccines With Self-Amplifying RNA Technology," William A. Haseltine, December 6, 2022. Link here.

For investors, see this post:

The future, to put this in perspctive:

• automobile technology : EVs :: pharmaceuticals : mRNA.

mRNA vaccines were in development for two decades (? -- needs to be fact-checked) prior to coronavirus pandemic. 

mRNA technology has revolutionized prevention of infectious diseases and may have other uses.

Seasonal flu vaccines: by 2023, we should be seeing mRNA vaccines which will be much better than current seasonal flu vaccines.

The other day I posted this graphic, link here: 

I don't recall posting this graphic, but if I did, I did not annotate it, as such: