Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

by David Quammen

It meant that horseshoe bats are a reservoir, if not the reservoir, of SARS-CoV. It meant that civets must have been an amplifier host, not a reservoir host, during the 2003 outbreak. It meant that no one knew just what had happened in Guangdong that winter to trigger the outbreak, although Li and his colleagues could speculate. (“An infectious consignment of bats serendipitously juxtaposed with a susceptible amplifying species,” they wrote, “could result in spillover and establishment of a market cycle while susceptible animals are available to maintain infection.” Infection by association. Susceptible animals might include not just masked palm civets but also raccoon dogs, ferret badgers, who knows what. So many different candidates pass through the wildlife supply chain.) It meant that you could kill every civet in China and SARS would still be among you.