The Times reports that mink farms (some of them in Utah) threaten to become a source of new coronavirus variants and an object lesson in how ‘spillback’ can make deadly diseases even deadlier. Today we’ll talk with David Quammen about spillover, spillback, Coronavirus and future viruses.
Credit The Open Notebook
Montana-based writer David Quammen says that Covid-19 is a reminder of viruses’ destructive power, but that life as we know it would be impossible without them. In his latest article for National Geographic titled “How Viruses Shape Our World,” he reviews the evolutionary origins of viruses and how they have helped shape the history of life.
In a recent OpEd for the New York Times he looks at the pandemic from the point of view of the Covd-19 virus. Quammen warned, in the New York Times on January 28, 2020, that the “novel coronavirus” could prove to be The Next Big One. And in May in The New Yorker, he focused on the warnings that should have alerted us, but didn t, to the coming of an event like this coronavirus pandemic.
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Today we’ll talk with David Quammen about viruses in general and the SARS-CoV-2 virus specifically.
Montana-based writer David Quammen says that Covid-19 is a reminder of viruses’ destructive power, but that life as we know it would be impossible without them. In his latest article for National Geographic titled “How Viruses Shape Our World.” he reviews the evolutionary origins of viruses and how they have helped shape the history of life. In a recent OpEd for the New York Times he looks at the pandemic from the point of view of the Covd-19 virus. Quammen warned, in the New York Times on January 28, 2020, that the “novel coronavirus” could prove to be The Next Big One. And in May in The New Yorker, he focused on the warnings that should have alerted us, but didn t, to the coming of an event like this coronavirus pandemic.