This point about opportunity is a crucial idea, more subtle than it might seem. I had heard it from a few other disease scientists. It’s crucial because it captures the randomness of the whole situation, without which we might romanticize the phenomena of emerging diseases, deluding ourselves that these new viruses attack humans with some sort of purposefulness. (Loose talk about “the revenge of the rain forest”6 is one form of such romanticizing. That’s a nice metaphor, granted, but shouldn’t be taken too seriously.) Epstein was talking, in an understated way, about the two distinct but
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