Spillover: the powerful, prescient book that predicted the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

by David Quammen

Ebola is difficult to study, Leroy explained, because of the character of the virus. It strikes rarely, it progresses quickly through the course of infection, it kills or it doesn’t kill within just a few days, it affects only dozens or hundreds of people in each outbreak, and those people generally live in remote areas, far from research hospitals and medical institutes—far even from his institute, CIRMF. (It takes about two days to travel, by road and river, from Franceville to Mayibout 2.) Then the outbreak exhausts itself locally, coming to a dead end, or is successfully stanched by intervention. The virus disappears like a band of jungle guerrillas. “There is nothing to do,” Leroy said, expressing the momentary perplexity of an otherwise patient man. He meant, nothing to do except keep trying, keep working, keep sampling from the forest, keep responding to outbreaks as they occur. No one can predict when and where Ebola virus will next spill. “The virus seems to decide for itself.”