Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

by David Quammen

Picture those circumstances for Kelly Warfield. Customarily she worked in the BSL-4 suite known as AA-5, off a cinderblock corridor in the most secure wing of USAMRIID, behind three pressure-sealed doors and a Plexiglas window. She wore a blue vinyl protective suit (she and her colleagues simply called them “blue suits,” not space suits or hazmats) with a fully enclosed hood, a clear face shield, and a ventilation hookup. Attached to her hookup was a yellow hose, coiling down from the ceiling to bring filtered air. She wore rubber boots and two pairs of gloves—latex gloves beneath heavier canners gloves, sealed to her suit at the wrists with electrical tape. Even with canners gloves over latex, her hands were the most vulnerable part of her body; they couldn’t be protected with vinyl because they had to be delicately dexterous. Her workbench was a stainless steel cart, like a hospital cart, easy to clean, easy to move. If you didn’t love the work, you wouldn’t put yourself in this place.