Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

by David Quammen

if the world’s forests or other natural ecosystems contain populations of wild animals in which that virus circulates, either because they are the original reservoir hosts (horseshoe bats in southern China?) or because they have become infected by contact with humans (mink in Utah? deer mice in Westchester County?), then there is no end to COVID-19. (There is probably no end to it regardless, but that’s another matter, to which I’ll return.) There is no herd immunity where there is a sylvatic cycle. An unvaccinated person has contact with an infected wild animal (a mink, a cougar, a monkey, a deer mouse) during some activity (hunting, cutting timber, picking fruit, sweeping up urine-laced dust in a cabin) and becomes infected with the virus, potentially triggering a new outbreak among people. You could vaccinate every person on Earth (that’s not gonna happen) and the virus would still be present around us, circulating, replicating, mutating, evolving, generating new variants, ready for its next opportunity.

Oof