Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

by David Quammen

Suspicion that the virus might have a lab origin, they wrote, “stems from the coincidence that it was first detected in a city that houses a major virological laboratory that studies coronaviruses.” But the link to Wuhan, they added, more likely reflects the facts that it’s the largest city in central China, a hub for travel and commerce, densely populated by eleven million people, with multiple animal markets in its midst. Yes, Holmes and his coauthors agreed, the possibility of a lab accident can’t be entirely dismissed. Furthermore, that hypothesis may be nearly impossible to disprove. But it’s “highly unlikely,” they judged, “relative to the numerous and repeated human-animal contacts that occur routinely in the wildlife trade.” Failure to investigate that zoonotic dimension, with collaborative studies, crossing borders between countries and boundaries between species, would leave this pandemic festering and the world still very vulnerable to the next one.