Spillover
This work examines the emergence and causes of new diseases all over the world, describing a process called "spillover" where illness originates in wild animals before being passed to humans and discusses the potential for the next huge pandemic. The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pandemic. We hear news reports of Ebola, SARS, AIDS, and something called Hendra killing horses and people in Australia; but those reports miss the big truth that such phenomena are part of a single pattern. The bugs that transmit these diseases share one thing: they originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. As globalization spreads and as we destroy the ancient ecosystems, penetrating ever deeper into the furthest reaches of the planet, we encounter strange and dangerous infections that originate in animals but can be transmitted to humans. It is reckoned that at least 60% of our infections diseases derive from animals. Diseases that were contained are being set free and the results are potentially catastrophic. The author tracks this subject around the world. He recounts adventures in the field, netting bats in China, trapping monkeys in Bangladesh, stalking gorillas in the Congo, with the world's leading disease scientists.
Stats for nerds
11recommend
20mentions
16people
2013–2026years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For those interested, I would suggest checking out Spillover by David Quammen. It goes into detail on why eradicating/eliminating zoonotic diseases isn't really feasible without also eradicating the host populations. I stumbled onto it and read it early on during SARS-CoV-2, it will give you a new perspective on the management of disease in general.
As for eradicating host populations/mosquitoes, it's not the greatest idea. Ecosystems are complicated and don't generally benefit from that sort of interference. Maybe if it's a recently invasive species, sure, as long as other species don't get inadvertently by-caught. Drastically simplifying - birds need to eat too, and they tried to do this style of ecosystem management in the past and it has had brutally adverse effects for ecosystem stability.
I think that this is an incredible development, but also seems kind of destabilizing. It's hard to say without seeming or being callous, that it seems good now, but we need to try to predict outcomes far into the future. That is to say - people think they are smart to have done it, and yeah it's doable, but is it really such a great idea to throw such a series of proverbial monkey wrenches into our proverbial biological engines?
- There are numerous examples of similar events in the past which are roughly the source for 2/3rds of all of our pathogens. We don't have any evidence for the remaining 1/3rd, mostly because biology is messy and too much time has passed.
No hard evidence for a lableak exists can be because of obstruction by the CCP (it is a possibility) or simply because there wasn't a lab leak. You can't jump to conclusions like that.
We may never know for certain, but it is also still possible that the reservoir will one day be discovered, for some diseases it took many years to do so.
Highly recommended book: 'David Quammen, Spillover'.
Note the date it was written, read it and then you may see a bit more clearly why I don't think a lab leak should be the foremost candidate for this particular virus. The writing was on the wall for years that something like this will happen, and, sorry to bring bad news, it will likely happen again. Possibly much worse.
- > How do you prepare for something that you don't know is going to happen?
The pandemic was predicted many years in advance, by many people: https://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-seemingly-predict...
The fact it was a coronavirus coming over from animals was also highly predictable, given SARS and MERS. There is a fantastic book called Spillover by David Quammen which lays all this out and explains why it was virtually guaranteed to happen.
- David Quammen's book Spillover is informative about the role of animal infections and the pandemic.
- I've re-read Spillover by David Quammen and would heartily recommend it to anybody interested in where these pandemics come from and why they are happening now.
On a lighter note: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman.
- There was nothing unpredictable about this. In 2013 I got handed a copy of a book called 'Spillover, Animal infections and the next pandemic' by David Quammen.
It was pretty much a storyboard for how COVD-19 (and other) diseases come into play and spread around the world. Totally predictable, in excruciating detail.
https://books.google.nl/books/about/Spillover_Animal_Infecti...
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