DNA Science
(The Wistar Institute)
Hindsight is 2020, perhaps literally, when it comes to COVID-19. A compelling narrative predicting that a deadly virus – specifically, a coronavirus – would jump species, seeding the pandemic, runs through reports and opinions published in the major medical and scientific journals.
We knew.
Exactly 17 years ago, Toronto physician Paul Caulford wrote in the last issue of
The Lancet for 2003, in “SARS: aftermath of an outbreak,” that “SARS brought one of the finest publicly-funded health systems in the world to its knees in a matter of weeks.” His description of the daily devastation presaged the nightly news of much of 2020.