Once we come out on the other side though, there will be deeper questions to be asked.
Right now, most people are of course concerned with the direct impact on public health and their jobs. David Quammen’s Spillover may have been published back in 2012, but it eerily foreshadows the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic that currently keeps the world in its grip, and provides many insights. Some books, it seems, sit on your shelf just waiting for the right moment. In a journey that takes him from southern China to the Congo, from Cameroon to Kinshasa, David Quammen tracks these infections to their source and asks what we can do to prevent some new pandemic spreading across the face of the earth. Diseases that were contained are being set free and the results are potentially catastrophic. As globalization spreads and as we destroy the ancient ecosystems, we encounter strange and dangerous infections that originate in animals but that can be transmitted to humans. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic tells the story of such diseases. Now the forests are being cut down and the colonies of bats are roosting elsewhere. The bats had lived undisturbed for centuries in Queensland's eucalyptus forests. It takes months to establish that the cause is a virus which has travelled from a tree-dwelling bat to horse, and from horse to man. The foreman at the stables becomes ill and the trainer dies. First, a horse in Brisbane falls ill: fever, swelling, bloody froth.
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