David Quammen
Among the many many controversies linked to the pandemic is the query: The place did SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, come from earlier than it emerged in Wuhan, China in 2019?
Veteran science journalist David Quammen skillfully and artfully tackles this query in his latest guide “Breathless: The Scientific Effort to Defeat a Deadly Virus.” It’s a detective story in regards to the supply of the virus and what’s recognized, as of 2022. It is usually an amazing learn for any journalist on the lookout for context about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus doubtless emerged and who the educated scientists are to speak to as this story unfolds.
In his guide, Quammen rigorously walks readers via the proof that helps and counters two doable theories— the virus was of pure origin, brewed throughout the physique of 1 or a number of animals after which grew to become adaptable to people and different animals, or it was engineered in a lab in China and launched both by accident or on objective.
Primarily based on virtually 100 interviews with skilled virologists, scientists, and public well being officers, in addition to analyses of dozens of research from January 2020 via February 2022, Quammen considers and vets the pure and lab-borne theories, explaining how the scientists reached their conclusions. All through the guide, Quammen weaves in classes on virology, molecular biology and the historical past of the 2003 SARS and 2012 MERS outbreaks.
The conclusion? The proof continues to level to an animal, doubtless a horseshoe bat, being the reservoir of the virus that then jumped to people via an animal that was on the market at a moist market in Wuhan, China. (Moist market is the term for markets the place stay animals are offered for meals.)
“There’s a preponderance of proof that the origins of this virus are pure,” Quammen stated in a Dec. 14 AHCJ webcast about his guide. “That this can be a coronavirus that was assembled by good quaint Darwinian pure choice.”
Throughout the webinar, Quammen additionally supplied ideas on how well being and science journalists can reply to public skepticism of science, how he wrote his guide, how he finds analogies to clarify difficult subjects to readers, COVID-19 story concepts for 2023 and what virus with pandemic potential most scientists are nervous about proper now (trace: avian flu).
We additionally talked extensively about why some scientists (a minority not a majority) doubt the proof thus far that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is pure in origin and in regards to the acrimonious and politicized public debate enjoying out on social media. Sadly, China’s authorities has impeded the World Well being Group’s virus origin investigation, fueling ongoing suspicion about scientific knowledge from China.
In October 2022, a Republican Senate Well being, Training Labor and Pensions committee declared the lab leak was the “most likely” concept. The dedication was primarily based on the dearth of definitive proof proving the pure origin concept, as nicely as a disputed English translation of inner Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory paperwork that appeared to recommend a biosecurity breach had occurred on the lab in November 2019.
“It’s very exhausting to show a detrimental,” Quammen stated through the webcast. He described the Senate report as “unpersuasive” in its conclusion, because it didn’t provide any new scientific proof.
“Is it doable, theoretically doable, that this virus leaked from a laboratory? Sure,” Quammen stated. “Is there any constructive proof in help of that? No, there’s not.”
To study extra about Quammen’s guide and the virus origin story, watch our 45-minute webcast with Quamman here.
And for extra on how further science journalists are grappling with overlaying the SARS-CoV-2 origin story, see this recorded panel discussion on the Nationwide Affiliation of Science Writers conference in October 2022.
Additionally, see my March 22 blog post on assets for overlaying the origin story.
