Spillover by David Quammen

If you want to discover everything on viruses read Spillover

by David Quammen book released by Adelphi. I simply adore Quammen a scientific journalist with an approach practical, strong and ironic and profound connaisseur of every possible virus existing on the face of our Earth.

 

Written before the advent of the pandemic, this one is an engaging, beautiful and terrible trip in that hidden world that is the one of viruses. Why beautiful and adventurous?

Because studying viruses can be a mission. A love. A love for a special virus. It could be Ebola, SARS: a life devoted to that special one, attracting the researcher for a reason or another, and, let's add this, with the risks existing in that everyday life spento in laboratories.

 

It is an adventurous world also, like the one of explorers, because, researchers, biologists must afford in the wildest places of the Planet, searching for wild animals, their blood, poo or pee for trying to find some positivity at a certain kind of virus. These animals that they research, they can be bat, other mammals, insects, are the passdoor of a certain new virulent virus in human society.

 

But...What does spillover mean in scientific terms?

The passage of a virus from an animal's body to a human one with devastating consequences, like a pandemic or severe outbreaks in various areas of the world.

When, in synthesis in the body of the new guest, the virus becomes more powerful, more dangerous: a condition, this one that sometimes in animals bringing the virus can be unknown. Yes, a virus can stay silent in the bodies of some animals, while in other ones becoming heavily destructive.

 

EBOLA and  SARS.

 

Ebola is one of the most mysterious and lethal viruses of our modernity. Why?

For the damages caused to our body, but also because offers violent outbreaks with wagons of departures for then staying silent per years. It's of course a stroke of luck this One, but there are a lot of complexities. One for all, for example no one till now have been in grade to discover which is the animal in grade to pass to primates or humans the virus.

 

There are certain animals severely damaged like humans are, let's observe the case of gorillas, disappeared in some African forests because of severe EBOLA outbreaks experienced by them as well, but it is still completely unknown the animal-vector of these outbreaks.

 

Mortality, at the moment there are 5 types of EBOLA, is very high, in particular in the first type, and more weak in the other ones.

 

People started to fall sick in a case after that, someone during a hunting session  found a gorilla in a forest, probably plenty of Ebola virus, dead several days before and brought to the village: although not too fresh, people ate it avidly because starved. It was a disaster in terms of contagions and departures.

 

 

SARS: this one has been a terrible illness for sure. It didn't become a pandemic, but later we have met it again with SARS-COV-2.

 

Yes, this sindrome loves to...flying. The virus started his ascension in China, then arrived in Hong Kong, then America...

Meetings, trips of vacation with fatal results, patients ended up in ICU, that later became super-spreaders...

 

The book continues with the fascination that only Quemman puts when writing on viruses and that hidden static world, that can appear to us in its complete brutality when a new and powerful destructive virus emerges on surface.

I love this book so badly. I brought It everywhere!

 

Beautiful book! Highly recommended.

 

 

Anna Maria Polidori