Omicron: From Pandemic to Endemic

Covid-19 has challenged and upended many common notions around viral infection. The Omicron variant is likely the most infectious virus since the 1918 influenza pandemic with over 200 million cases currently confirmed worldwide. As many as a third of the global population may have been infected with the Omicron variant, considering unreported cases and asymptomatic carriers.

In his latest book, bestselling author William A. Haseltine and co-author Griffin McCombs offers a detailed analysis of how the Omicron variant evolved to evade our best defenses and provides a roadmap for how we might protect ourselves against future variants.

Omicron: From Pandemic to Endemic (ACCESS Health Press, April 2022) collects insights from the latest research on the entire family of Omicron variants and explains the lessons that we need to implement in our public health and medical practices going forward. While many governments and citizens alike are growing weary of protective Covid-19 measures, Haseltine argues that this is not the time to let our guard down. The increasing transmissibility of the Omicron variant demonstrates the immense capacity for evolution by this virus. In terms of lethal potential, SARS-CoV-2 sits on a knife’s edge, one unlucky point mutation away from becoming substantially more dangerous.

Natural Immunity

Understanding our natural immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus is critical to understanding the Covid-19 pandemic and serves as a guide to what more we can do to protect ourselves.

The natural immune system is what equips the body with the tools necessary to counter new threats from the microbial world and prevent severe disease. Only when these natural protections fail do we succumb to critical illness or death. How natural immunity functions has eluded our understanding—until now.

This book collects insights from a fast-growing body of scientific research on the next frontier of pandemic control, not just for Covid-19 but existing and future infectious diseases. We now find ourselves in a uniquely challenging stage of the pandemic, without a long-lasting vaccine and facing a virus that evolves rapidly to become more transmissible and to defeat our best attempts at prevention and treatment. Haseltine argues that one way forward is to develop drugs that strengthen our natural immune defenses and keep vulnerable populations protected and healthy against existing and future variants.

The book maps out how the body mobilizes its natural defenses against SARS-CoV-2. It also describes the virus’s extensive set of countermeasures. Strengthening the natural immune system and devising means to thwart the virus’s countermeasures opens a golden path to prevention and treatment of Covid-19.

CV-PTSD

In CV-PTSD: What It Is and What To Do About It, bestselling author William A. Haseltine gives us a name for the trauma we have experienced throughout the pandemic, both individually and collectively: Covid Related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CV-PTSD). In addition to outlining the shape of our shared experience, the book also lays out a comprehensive road map to help us plot a course to rebuild our societies, better and healthier than they were before.

Each chapter of the book explores the effects of the pandemic on different groups, such as schoolchildren, parents, healthcare workers, and caregivers. Taken together, the work is an urgent call to action for policymakers, healthcare leaders and patients themselves to recognize the symptoms of our shared experience and to find new opportunities to rebuild society more completely and compassionately than before.

CV-PTSD is a Living eBook, updated regularly with new information as it unfolds.

Science as a Superpower

When you think about superheroes, what comes to mind? Muscle-bound men and women adorned in capes or hi-tech armor? Superhuman abilities like flying or x-ray vision? It’s unlikely you thought of people in white lab coats looking through microscopes. But in real life, science is the most powerful superpower in the world. Think about it. Scientists have used their powers to make the once impossible happen: cure diseases, extend human life, feed the world, and bring us to outer space and beyond. They are, indeed, modern-day superheroes, saving and improving millions of lives.



Dr. William Haseltine discovered the power of science at an early age. And now in his latest book, Science as a Superpower: My Lifelong Fight Against Disease and the Heroes who Made it Possible, he shares his love of science with the hope of inspiring young people to pursue a life in science and someday make their own contributions to improve human life. Woven throughout are stories of his work with some of recent history’s biggest scientific heroes, and of his many successes (and failures) as he learned how to harness the superpower that is science to build a successful—and deeply impactful—career of his own.

Variants!

As the world moves into the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 variants are now the fundamental issue at the root of many of our questions — Will the vaccines work? Will we need new shots each year? Will the pandemic end or can we expect a renewed surge of Covid-19 cases every year, like we see with the flu?

Understanding virus variation is critical to understanding how the pandemic will unfold and how Covid-19 may continue to affect our global economy, our societies, and all of us individually. Will the current decline in new infections in the United States, for example, be permanent or a case of seasonal population immunity? These are the questions and issues at the heart of a new book by William A. Haseltine, PhD, Variants! The Shape-Shifting Challenge of COVID-19.

My Lifelong Fight Against Disease

“Place this book at the top of your list. You will be inspired to make an impact on the world, with a remarkable guide to help show you the path.”


Sanjay Gupta, MD

Associate Professor of Neurosurgery, Emory; Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN

Anticipating a career in medicine, Dr. William A. Haseltine was in his first weeks of graduate studies at Harvard when a legendary physician-scientist offered this advice: “You can do more for human health through science than you ever could as a doctor.” That advice hit him “like a thunderbolt”—and he took it.

Since then, Dr. Haseltine has helped combat cancers, worked to contain the HIV/AIDS pandemic and unlocked the power of the human genome to develop dozens of new pharmaceutical cures. His discoveries in molecular biology and genomics, amplified through his counsel at the highest levels of government and in the public eye, have improved the health and lives of millions of people around the world.

For the first time, Dr. Haseltine tells his life story—which is still unfolding—in My Lifelong Fight Against Disease, including facing devastating public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and highlighting exhilarating moments of medical discovery. In writing the story of his wide-ranging career, Dr. Haseltine’s goals are simple: to encourage the next generation to make their own significant contribution to human life, and for all readers to appreciate science as a humanistic enterprise.

A compulsively readable and fast paced insider’s account of some of the most brilliant medical breakthroughs in modern history, My Lifelong Fight Against Disease is a candid, evocative and ultimately revelatory exploration into what it means to make science your life.