Summary of David Quammen’s Breathless (EPUB)

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The group of scientists who had long seen the advent of a pandemic in the making were infectious disease scientists. They knew that the next pandemic would likely be a virus with a certain kind of genome, written in RNA, and that it would likely be a novel virus that could quickly adapt.

#2 Stay home from school work if you’re sick. A Wuhan city hospital has reported a sudden outbreak of pneumonia in young patients… It’s unknown what the pathogen is, but the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission has issued an internal notice warning the public to stay home if they’re sick. That post went viral in China and was picked up by other international news agencies, but Yize Li’s main audience was the otherworldly set of people with whom he spends most of his time these days: the scientists and public health officials who study emerging infectious diseases. The next day he posted a follow-up: I think this is a case of COVID-19, since it’s similar to the 2014 case in China (the source of a lot of the cases in Wuhan today). The 2014 case in China was caused by an index case traveling from China to Wuhan, and then to other cities. -> The group of scientists who had long seen the advent of a pandemic in the making were infectious disease scientists.

#3 Scientists have long known that the next pandemic would be a virus with a certain kind of genome, written in RNA, and that it would likely be a novel virus that could quickly adapt.

#4 Stay home if you’re sick. -> The group of scientists who had long seen the advent of a pandemic in the making were infectious disease scientists. They knew that the next pandemic would likely be a virus with a certain kind of genome, written in RNA, and that it would likely be a novel virus that could quickly adapt.