LAUSR

With 194 million cases worldwide and 4.16 million deaths (as of July 2021), the ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is second only to the 1918–1920 flu pandemic in the number of (estimated) cases and deaths. However, while scientific knowledge on the H1N1 virus was non-existent in 1918, the same cannot be stated regarding the dramatic potential of novel coronaviruses, like the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), to cause harm to human health. The following is a brief summary of the past 17 years of knowledge about coronavirus that the scientific community had already gathered regarding the potential threat to humanity of this type of emergent virus and, therefore, the evidence that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCs) and the World Health Organization (WHO) seem to have ignored or at the very least underestimated. A recent study has revealed that SARS-CoV-2 had been present in Italy at least since September 2019, as demonstrated by presence of neutralizing antibodies in the serum from patients enrolled in an oncological study [1]. The virus itself has been recently isolated in wastewater sampled in December 2019, in different Italian regions simultaneously [2]. By March 9, 2020 Italy was in lockdown. The WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. These facts alone highlight the total lack of appreciation of a looming local (Italian) and global threat, that has caused 128 000 deaths in Italy alone as of July 2021 (source: Italian Ministry of Health). The striking chasm between available scientific knowledge and capacity to put it into practice by governmentsponsored and publicly-financed institutions for disease “control and prevention” needs to be urgently addressed, if we are not to succumb to the new challenges that lie ahead.