"It's so accurate even without a virus name!"
More vivid than textbooks, deeper than academic papers
Records of infectious diseases found in literature and insights into the future

Camus's The Plague, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, and countless other novels from the pandemic era.
Literature, which depicts human life and death, has always featured disease.
However, the bacteria, viruses, and parasites that cause the disease were not simply backgrounds, but important subjects that moved the work.

"Novels Written with Microorganisms" is a book in which a microbiologist sheds new light on infectious diseases in literature.
It covers a total of 14 infectious diseases, including the plague, tuberculosis, cholera, syphilis, scarlet fever, typhoid, malaria, influenza, rabies, AIDS, and COVID-19, and explores how the symptoms, narratives, and social meanings depicted in the novels connect with actual scientific facts.
The diseases depicted in novels are more vivid than textbooks and more human than academic papers.
Through this, readers will rediscover the history of how infectious diseases have transformed not only individual lives but also social discrimination, solidarity, hatred, and even the way we love.
And 'Infectious Disease X', which is covered in the last chapter, comes as a warning message to prepare for a future disease that has not yet been named.

In the West, rabies is often associated with folklore.
A representative example is the vampire legend.
This is a story that has been going around with considerable basis since Dr. Juan Gomez-Alonso of Spain claimed it in 1998.
First of all, symptoms of rabies include facial contortions, convulsions, and extreme sensitivity to stimuli, which make the person look like a monster.
It is not difficult to connect these symptoms with vampires.
(……) The vampire's aversion to stimuli such as smells and light is also a symptom of a rabid patient.
--- p.239

Thanks to Salk and Sabin's independent vaccine development and mass vaccination, polio has been virtually eradicated.
So, in "A Thousand Blues," it was said that the setting of Grace's Folio was not very realistic.
However, in reality, poliovirus has not completely disappeared from the West, even outside of the few countries where polio occurs.
(……) In 2019, a polio case was reported in Malaysia for the first time in 27 years, and in 2022, a polio case was reported in the UK for the first time in 40 years.
In the United States, a patient was reported for the first time in nine years.
--- p.262~263

She clearly realized that AIDS was different from other diseases.
He knew that while death from other illnesses brought “a sudden spurt of life,” his illness was “a slow abandonment from life,” and “parts of the body would become disobedient one after another, destroying life.”
And yet, you're thinking about marriage...
--- p.271

There have also been cases of large-scale infection of blood donors due to reuse of needles when collecting blood at blood banks.
Gao Yaojie, a doctor who exposed this situation in rural China in the 1990s, was forced to seek asylum in the United States.
This story was novelized by Yan Lianke (閻連科, 1958~), who is considered one of China's most controversial writers.
The work is called “Dream of Ding Village.”
--- p.281

In an interview with the New York Times, Yan Lianke said, “If you see what you are allowed to see and ignore what you are not allowed to see, you can gain power, fame and money.
(……) Our amnesia is a state-sponsored sport,” he said.
--- p.283

Perhaps the person most blamed for AIDS is French-Canadian Gaétan Dugas.
He is known as 'patient zero' in relation to AIDS.
The former flight attendant was accused of being an AIDS superspreader after it was revealed that she had slept with 750 men in three years before it was discovered that she had AIDS.
He was even evaluated as “the most notorious infectious disease patient in history” after Typhoid Mary.
--- p.286

Coronaviruses are known as viruses that cause colds in humans or diseases in livestock such as chickens and cows.
To that extent, there was no reason for researchers to be very interested.
Interest in such coronaviruses has grown since November 2002.
The coronavirus that caused SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which started in Guangdong Province in China and spread to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, and other places, once terrifying the world. (...) Around the time when memories of SARS were fading, a virus struck our country.
Since 2012, a new type of coronavirus infection has been prevalent in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.
The disease, named MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, was initially thought to be a strange disease from a distant and unknown country, but it started in 2015 with a patient who returned home infected from Bahrain and spread through large hospitals, causing great harm to our country.
--- p.297

But what was more inconvenient and regrettable than anything else were not the minor inconveniences of daily life.
As Yoon Go-eun also points out, the fear that “someone’s breath is a threat” and the threat of having to be afraid and suspicious of meeting new people not only made my heart more uncomfortable but also made my life more miserable.
--- p.300

As March 2025 marked the fifth anniversary of the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, many media outlets, including Scientific American, published articles claiming that COVID-19 still exists and is even a threat.
The article said the COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 20 million people, cost an estimated $16 trillion, kept 1.6 billion children out of school, and pushed about 130 million people into poverty.
But this isn't a thing of the past. By early 2025, more than 1,000 people worldwide will be dying from COVID-19 every week, with three-quarters of those deaths occurring in the United States.
Millions of people are also said to still be suffering from what is called "long COVID."
There are also predictions that COVID-19 will visit us every winter like the seasonal flu.
In reality, COVID-19 has not disappeared.
--- p.315~316

'Infectious Disease X' refers to a hypothetical disease or pathogen established by the WHO in February 2018 when it established a priority list of diseases that could threaten humanity in the future.
At that time, after discussion among experts, WHO designated Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola fever, Marburg fever, Lassa fever, MERS, SARS, Nipah virus, Rift Valley fever, Zika, and infectious disease X as diseases that could cause global public health emergencies and reported that countermeasures were needed.
Here, infectious disease X is defined as “a disease caused by a pathogen that is not currently known to cause disease in humans but could cause serious disease in the future.”
--- p.322

The identity of the red-eyed monster has not been revealed.
Although it is not clear where it originated, it is clearly a zoonosis, as a dog trader who had the flu became ill after being bitten by a dog, and Ringo the wolf dog was the key link. It is the type of disease that the WHO and experts have pointed out as having a high possibility of causing Infectious Disease X.
A zoonotic disease is a disease that infects both animals and humans.
However, if we interpret it from a human perspective, it refers to a disease that is transmitted to humans through animals as the reservoir host (natural host).
Zoonotic diseases are caused by all kinds of pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, and prions.
These are things like the plague, typhus, malaria, rabies, AIDS, and COVID-19, which were discussed in this book.
--- p.325

A 2005 analysis by Mark Woolhouse and Sonya Gauthej-Siqueria of the University of Edinburgh in the UK found that 58 percent of 1,407 human pathogens cause zoonotic diseases.
There were 177 newly emerged or re-emerging pathogens, three-quarters of which were zoonotic pathogens.
In a study by Kate Jones et al. in the UK that analyzed 300 new infectious diseases that occurred from 1940 to 2004, the proportion of zoonotic diseases was around 60%.
This means that there is a very high possibility that new infectious diseases that may emerge in the future will be caused by zoonotic pathogens.
--- p.326

It is noteworthy that the emergence of new viruses or bacteria due to climate disruption is not only a possibility but is actually occurring.
--- p.329

Most of the viruses that many experts are paying particular attention to are RNA viruses.
Astute readers will have noticed that nearly all of the viruses discussed in this book contain RNA as their genetic material. Because RNA is single-stranded, unlike double-stranded DNA, when mutations occur, there's no original source for correction, so mutations are more likely to be fixed.
Because we only look at the results, we say that RNA has a fast mutation rate or that mutations occur easily.
However, because mutations occur frequently and quickly, there are many cases of being eliminated, but there is also a high possibility that viruses that can adapt to new environments will emerge.
There are pathogens that satisfy the above conditions.
It is the avian influenza virus.
Avian influenza viruses cause acute infectious diseases in chickens, ducks, and wild birds.
--- p.331

It also warns of what could happen if the outbreak of infectious diseases combines with other social unrest.
Most novels and movies that deal with apocalyptic visions of the future of the Earth depict it as being preceded by physical destruction such as nuclear weapons or the domination of artificial intelligence (AI), but we should seriously consider the possibility that it could be caused by a new, uncontrollable infectious disease, or Infectious Disease X.
Preparing for infectious disease X is not a problem that should be solved only by (infectious disease) doctors, scientists, health authorities, and health-related social organizations.
--- p.334

So what should we do to prepare for infectious disease X? (This is not my personal opinion, but rather a summary of common points from experts' opinions.) First, we must expect that a pandemic will inevitably occur.
(……) According to a study published in 2021 by Marco Marani et al., the probability of a pandemic like COVID-19 occurring in the future is about 1 in 50 each year, which means that the probability of a person experiencing a pandemic in their lifetime is about 38%.
--- p.334

We must have an innovative vaccine development platform that can prepare for emerging infectious diseases.
Because we never know which pathogens will cause new infectious diseases, we need to be able to develop vaccines and drugs quickly to address them.
(……) The research funds that were briefly supported during the SARS outbreak and briefly supported during the MERS outbreak were withdrawn and then used to pay for much more during the COVID-19 period.
--- p.335

Even now, we continue to warn about infectious disease X.
If that warning works, we won't have a pandemic caused by disease X.
You may feel that the warning was excessive.
You might also suspect that the warning might be false.
It might be a waste of money to go there.
But when Infectious Disease X struck and destroyed our lives and daily lives, there was no warning, or the warning was wrong.
Therefore, we must constantly warn, even if the warning is like the words of a shepherd boy.
The criticism that the overreaction to the new flu, which caused less damage than expected, was wasteful is now barely remembered.
But the price for that criticism has been paid in full in the COVID-19 pandemic.
--- p.335

We need to develop the capacity to deal with fake news.
Speculation and over-interpretation are not helpful in dealing with a new infectious disease outbreak.
Misinformation, misunderstandings, and stigmatization must be dealt with swiftly and decisively.

--- p.335