Every species of wild animal living in our diverse ecosystems and our remnants of ecosystems carries viruses. QUAMMEN: Well, it happens by human contact with wild animals. Why does wild-animal-to-human transmission happen? How does it happen? SIMON: We've seen this happen, obviously, in - over the past generation - AIDS, West Nile fever, SARS, Ebola. That was all what sort of a composite of the potential events that scientists were telling me 10 years ago when I was researching my book. The idea that a new virus, a coronavirus, might come to us from a wild animal, probably a bat, maybe in a wet market, oh, for instance, in China, none of that was surprising. I was surprised by how unprepared we were. Good to be with you in this weird and difficult time. David, thanks so much for being with us.ĭAVID QUAMMEN: Thank you, Scott. David Quammen warned about exactly such a potential outbreak in his 2012 book "Spillover: Animal Infections And The Next Human Pandemic." David Quammen joins us now from his home in Bozeman, Mont. The novel coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China, where it's thought to have jumped from wild animals to humans maybe in open-air markets.
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