Montana author, David Quammen, predicted "scariest virus on earth" 8 years ago.

[MontanaMama]

David Quammen and his wife, conservationist and historian Betsy Gaines Quammen, are walking the talk as COVID-19 sweeps the world, the nation and, increasingly, Montana — as described in his ominously prescient 2012 best-selling book “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.”

Quammen is quick to assert he is no pandemic expert. Rather, he listens to experts and relays the science to the public in digestible language.

What those experts forecast — and what "Spillover" lays out in a sobering recap of pandemics, epidemics and outbreaks since 1961 — was a scenario revealing a new or “novel” virus, very possibly a coronavirus, coming from a wild animal, very possibly a bat, that was brought to a “wet” market, very possibly in China.

Read the whole article here: https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/bozeman-author-david-quammen-predicted-scariest-virus-on-earth-8-years-ago/article_f471ddda-b3ab-52c3-a6a0-51a014c797ca.html

[Igel]

1. If he didn't give a date, doesn't matter.

I can't help but note all the people saying, "Hey, everybody knew about this"--but who did pretty much nothing. Until now, when they scream about how bad Trump is. (Thing is, they were already screaming how bad Trump is.)

We've known since the '80s about the rising rate of zoonotic diseases, but most of them have been relatively mild compared to serious bugs.

SARS-CoV-2 isn't the scariest virus on Earth. People are like my kid. He was sure that the roller coaster I was trying to get him on was the scariest on Earth. It was the scariest he'd ever seen. At 20 feet or so high. There are lots higher, but his lack of experience was a problem.

That's been pointed out by others very recently. Where we don't have waves of disease--the last ones stopped in the '50s and '60s--where most illnesses are handled by vaccines and HIV/AIDS is considered an outlier (with conspiracy theories abounding)--this is one scary bug. But it's less bad than the Spanish flu had been, and the luck with MERS and SARS and H1N1 showed that we had nothing to fear from novel diseases.

If people took this seriously 8 years ago, there'd have been a big tussle 8 years ago. 2012. Instead the "fiscal cliff" was dealt with and decisions made as to how to prioritize funding in that year and the next without a huge life-or-death battle. When those smarter and wiser don't take threats seriously and we let the superior folk off the hook, it's hard to argue that those with a lower bar are more culpable and say the lesser folk are clearly more competent and to be held to a higher level of responsibility.

Even now we have the weirdness that Trump is responsible for it all. But if China had been more forthcoming, there's a really good chance it would have been contained there or like SARS was. Trump's hardly responsible for Italy or Spain. Germany's done good--but if you knock out just NY's deaths and population then the US is actually doing a bit better than Germany--and it's early, Germany's numbers have been on the rise in a serious way.

Life's nuanced.

[GusBob]

2. Great article.Bookmarked

Thank you for posting.

I will check out his books

He was in the Congo with Michael Fay. That really caught my eye

[MontanaMama]

3. I read that too and it interested me.

I think I'll pick up a couple of his books. Hope you're seeing some spring up at Rocky Boy, GusBob. I saw a glimmer of it yesterday down here.

[GusBob]

4. I just ordered 2 of his books

If you read the travel writer/naturalist Redmond O'Hanlon--he writes about Michael Fay and the Congo in his book "No Mercy"

Not enough Spring to fish yet MM, and I got elders carving fresh fish. Might snow this weekend

[eppur_se_muova]

5. I read his "Song of the Dodo". He's a very good popular science writer. nt