Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic Reprint Edition

Update on 4/5/20: This book is one of a handful of relatively recent books that will greatly help you understand COVID 19, Coronaviruses, and animal to human disease jumps. I highly recommend this book as well as Micheal Osterholm's book "Deadliest Enemy". The COVID 19 pandemic was a disaster just waiting to happen. The awful truth is we knew it but pretty much ignored the warnings. The scary reality is that another infectious pandemic of a different virus (flu?) could begin tomorrow, next month, or in the next few years. When we get past COVID 19 we CANNOT go back to business as usual! We MUST take this lesson in public health and prepare ourselves. The world spent $1.8 trillion dollars arming itself in 2019 (Wikipedia). If we took a tiny fraction of that money and devoted it to public health, disease control, and vaccination development we could prevent tens of millions of premature deaths! Please read this or one of the other excellent books on this subject and don't let our leaders go back to their old ways!!!Author David Quammen has written an important, informative, and entertaining (really!) book. He has taken on a potentially dry and depressing subject and made it both understandable and interesting. He's a very good science writer and I'll be looking forward to reading more titles from him.Quammen takes the reader on a journey through the world of epidemiologists, pathologists, veterinarians, and other scientists who put their health and lives on the line in the name of world health and science. He takes us into the story of some of the most deadly recent diseases in the world, all of which have jumped from animals to humans. This is a fascinating and critical story.Its a long book. My one mild criticism would be I think it could have been edited down somewhat without damaging its content or quality.I highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in the subject.

This is the best book I have read in a long time. It is like a mystery thriller played out in various exotic locations around the world, that simultaneously, gives the reader intriguing and accurate knowledge about various exotic but dangerous pathogens that have the potential to forever change life as we know it. In other words, if you would put the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, a travel diary book by Bill Bryson, and an Agatha Christie thriller in the mixer, you would get something like this. It just doesn't get better than this!David Quammen's writing is accessible and throughout the book I was amazed by his ability to explaining difficult scientific concepts in a way that makes the reader understand... even crave science. Though I have read many scholarly articles, no single text I can recall have given me such a deep understanding and appreciation for a scientific subject. I have always been fascinated by bacteria and viruses, however this book multiplied my fascination and my appreciation for the scientists that study viruses and other pathogens in humans as well as in other species.This book is about spillovers (surprise!). A spillover is when a virus or a bacteria which normally live in one species transfer to a different species. Normally this transition spells the end for the pathogen because they evolved to live in their host species and not in the new species, but sometimes the pathogen survive or even thrive in their new host, which is typically bad news for the new host.Think of pathogens such as Ebola, rabies, HIV, SARS, and the Spanish flu, all of which are spillovers from other species, and you will understand that pathogens that have the potential to spillover a.k.a zoonotic viruses can result in disaster.Be assured, you will learn much about these intriguing pathogens, however, this book is not just a review of what we know about zoonotic viruses. On the very first page Quammen takes us to a sunny idyllic farm in Australia. Recently a number of horses have died following under mysterious circumstances. Worse still, several humans that came into contact with the horse also died. What caused these deaths and from where did the horses acquire it? Quammen instantly grips the reader. It was an instant page turner, with real science in it! You must know how these horses and humans died and you gladly, eagerly, follow Quammen when he takes you on a journey in the scientific literature as it develops over time, with frequent field visits that Quammen personally joined to understand the subject better.Quammen cover several different pathogens, including HIV, Ebola, malaria, and SARS, and he travels accordingly. We get to follow scientists (and Quammen) into crowded Asian markets where hundreds of different animal species, each with their own set of nished pathogens, can be bought for that evenings dinner. We get to visit Bangladesh to analyse date-palm-sap to see if bats have pooped deadly virus into this popular drink. We visit the Congolese jungle where Ebola have completely eradicated large populations of gorillas as well as some smaller human populations. We go to caves filled with snakes, bats and guano. Of course we also get to visit high tech laboratories around the world to talk to researchers who try to understand these zoonotic viruses and predict where the next big pandemic will strike - because if or when "the next big one", capable of killing us by the millions, comes, it will almost certainly be a spillover from another species.The human species is vulnerable. We are around seven billion people. We are an urban species meaning that we tend of cluster in large groups (cities), which provides pathogens with the perfect springboard. We travel extensively, and could thus easily spread a virus around the globe in a short amount of time. We also continually mess with new ecological systems which may or may not have a deadly virus just waiting for a new host...Put another way. Human population growth is an typical example of an outbreak i.e., explosive population growth. Just like with outbreaks of crickets that sweep across Africa eating everything it encounter, humans are sweeping across the entire planet, interfering with lots of ecological systems along the way. Indeed the most massive outbreak of any species that the world had ever seen is not a cricket or a larva, it is homo sapiens. And when there is an outbreak of a particular species what typically halts it? You guessed it - pathogens.

Easy to comprehend the complex evolution of viruses. Especially after living through the COVID pandemic. So informative and written so anyone could understand even an unscientific like person like myself. The study is so fascinating. I’ve gained such respect for the scientists who care deeply for humanity and the health benefits they discover.

I read this shortly after the West Africa Ebola crisis, inspired by a desire to learn more about these types of diseases beyond what CNN and Fox had to say. I got more than I was looking for!I did not fully understand zoonotic diseases, their varied history, their many aspects, etc. I'm not a biologist. I didn't know there were host animals AND amplifiers. This book covers a lot of ground; not just the biology. Of course biology is a big part of it, but it avoids going into too much microbiology (fortunately). What it talks about is the history of these diseases, where they came from, who discovered them, how they searched for them, the history of some of the outbreaks, and some of the lab tests and experiments.One criticism is that I thought that some of the stories of the explorations had a bit too much detail. I didn't need to know every conversation people had, every relationship, each camping trip, etc. Of course it isn't all that occurred, but there were in my view too many.The author rightfully predicted that Ebola would eventually break out of Africa, even if that breakout to date has been fairly limited (though the panic wasn't).Again, a really good read though if you are looking for the answer to what should we do about these zoonotic diseases other than prepare and be aware, you won't find that here.