Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

by David Quammen

Nobody knows everything about this virus, and our efforts to comprehend it have only begun. As lengthy as the dreary months and years of the COVID-19 pandemic—the pandemic so far—may have felt to us, the time is early. We’ve scarcely started the effort of adapting ourselves and our societies for its next challenges and later stages. This virus is going to be with us forever. It will be in humans—always somewhere—and it will be in some of the animals that surround us. The rule “Never say never” is a sensible one, but no expert can tell us right now how SARS-CoV-2 might ever be eradicated. We haven’t eradicated polio, despite decades of effort. We haven’t eradicated measles. And those viruses have nowhere to hide except within humans. This virus has many more options. We might clear it from every human on Earth (not likely) and it will still be there in the white-tailed deer of Iowa, the stray mink on the landscape of Denmark.