In movies such as
Contagion, a pandemic begins in a flash. A deadly virus spills over from an animal, like a pig, into humans and then quickly triggers an outbreak.
But that’s not actually what happens, says Dr. Gregory Gray at the Duke Global Health Institute. “It’s not like in the movies,” he says, “where this virus goes from a pig in Indonesia and causes a pandemic.”
Over the past few decades, the U.S. government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars hunting down new viruses in animals, largely wild animals, in hopes of stopping a pandemic. And yet those efforts failed to find – and stop SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, before it spread around the world.
Image: Shane Tolentino for NPR
In movies such as
Contagion, a pandemic begins in a flash. A deadly virus spills over from an animal, like a pig, into humans and then quickly triggers an outbreak.
But that s not actually what happens, says Dr. Gregory Gray at the Duke Global Health Institute. It s not like in the movies, he says, where this virus goes from a pig in Indonesia and causes a pandemic.
Over the past few decades, the U.S. government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars hunting down new viruses in animals, largely wild animals, in hopes of stopping a pandemic. And yet those efforts failed to find – and stop SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, before it spread around the world.
After Covid 19: Searching for the Next Viral Threat
To Linfa Wang, PhD, some of the most important unanswered questions about the COVID-19 pandemic lie within slick layers of guano, deep in a hole in the ground.
A virologist with the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, Wang was part of a team of international scientists tasked by the World Health Organization (WHO) with unraveling the origins of the original SARS virus 17 years ago. Now he’s attempting to do the same with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, known as SARS-CoV-2. While the exact path the virus followed to begin infecting humans isn’t yet known, it’s almost certain to run through bats, which have been the focus of Wang’s work for nearly three decades. And that means looking at a lot of bat poop.
How Do We Stop The Next Pandemic? Here s A New Strategy wmky.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wmky.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Credit: Shane Tolentino for NPR
Anatomy Of A Spillover: We Failed To Stop SARS-CoV-2. How Do We Find Next Big One ? By
at 12:40 pm NPR
In movies such as Contagion, a pandemic begins in a flash. A deadly virus spills over from an animal, like a pig, into humans and then quickly triggers an outbreak.
But that s not actually what happens, says Dr. Gregory Gray at the Duke Global Health Institute. It s not like in the movies, he says, where this virus goes from a pig in Indonesia and causes a pandemic.
Over the past few decades, the U.S. government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars hunting down new viruses in animals, largely wild animals, in hopes of stopping a pandemic. And yet those efforts failed to find â and stop â SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, before it spread around the world.