Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

by David Quammen

Aleksei took me out to a food market for a glimpse of what’s presently available in Guilin’s aboveground economy. Strolling the narrow corridors between stalls, I saw vegetables laid out in neat bundles. The fruits were carefully piled. The mushrooms were gnomic. The red meat was sold mainly in slabs, joints, and pieces by women at large plywood tables, wielding sharp cleavers. The catfish, the crabs, and the eels churned slowly in aerated tanks. The bullfrogs huddled darkly in scrums. It was grim to be reminded how we doom animals with our appetite for flesh, but this place seemed no more odd or morbid than a meat market anywhere. That was the point. This was the “after” condition in a “before/after” contrast revealing how SARS had put a damper on yewei. What had changed here in recent years, Aleksei told me, was the disappearance of the trade in wildlife.