A Review of Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

A book detailing the efforts of scientists to deal with Covid might seem to offer a whodunit – who’s guilty of letting the virus escape? In that case,  writing about Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus would rate a Spoiler Alert… except, wait a minute… there isn’t a need. The book jacket comes out and declares that the book “traces the journey” of the “question of its origin.” Hold on: The journey of the question? Shouldn’t it be the journey to the answer? No, it’s not a destination kind of book. Nevertheless, that turns out to be just fine because it’s an engaging ride with fascinating characters and it gives us a conclusion without declaring it being one.

The author, David Quammen, is a science writer whose list of credits includes his 2016 book, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. So it’s not surprising that he spends a lot of time considering the role played by the Huanan market in Wuhan. He cites the report that of the first 41 cases in Wuhan, 27 had links to the market. He further explains that the very first case was a female seafood vendor who sold shrimp at the market. And he quotes a virologist’s conclusion in the Washington Post, “It becomes almost impossible to explain that pattern, if the epidemic didn’t start there.” Nevertheless, our author takes up that challenge, declaring, “Almost impossible to explain. But we can try.”

He goes on to craft a fictional scenario of how the virus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He hypothesizes how a laboratory worker managed to get infected via a spilled vial or maybe a “defective negative-pressure hood” or some other mistake/accident, perhaps unnoticed. This anonymous employee of the lab is labeled UW, for Unfortunate Worker. A few days after the incident at the lab, UW develops a fever and cough and calls in sick. But…

“… with a sudden hankering to buy some fresh fish for dinner, or a snake, or a bamboo rat, or maybe a raccoon dog for a family feast, UW travels ten miles, across the Yangtze River, to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market… Once at Huanan, inside the market, UW suffers an especially severe spasm of coughing and infects another person or possibly several. One of those persons infects another, then another, then two more. A shrimp vendor is infected. The Unfortunate Worker returns across the river, goes home, reports back to work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and is never heard of again. The novel virus from the lab has been seeded into the market.” Our author, Quammen, ends his hypothetical with this pair of short sentences: “It’s not impossible. But it seems unlikely.”

So, the origin is probably not from the Wuhan Institute, even as that impression lingers. Indeed, we learned there are several Institute t-shirts available on line, including the one shown below (from Zazzle.com).

While the book argues that we may never be certain of the origin of the virus that made its way to the Wuhan market, Quammen insists that we are still in the early stages of figuring that out. Arguing that a definitive answer could take decades, he cites the case of the search for the “Marburg virus reservoir.” The Marburg virus (named for the city in Germany which was one of the earlier places it infected humans) appeared in 1967, spread by live monkeys sent from Uganda for medical research. Researchers established that the infected monkeys were mere intermediaries, leaving the research team to seek out the source, the “reservoir.” The author explores the multiple people and institutions involved in the long search, eventually leading to the conclusion, “The reservoir host – or anyway, a reservoir host – of the Marburg virus had been found. It was safe to say [that it] originated from Egyptian fruit bats. That discovery had taken only forty-one years.” (Photo: an Egyptian fruit bat, as shown at smithsonianmag.com.)

That’s right: it took 41 years. Why? That’s a good (long) story, too involved to get into here, but it’s one of many dozens in Breathless, and one of many reasons to read the book.

As for Covid, Quammen concludes about Covid, “Nobody knows everything about this virus, and our efforts to comprehend it have only begun.”  Only begun. Yes, it’s a story about the journey. Expect sequels. But, after reading Breathless, it seems those later stories will be about “zoonotic spillover” and one day we may have a nice animal photo to add to the history of Covid.

STATS OF THE MONTH

A Fulfilling Life or a Life With Less Certainty?

By Bill Davenhall, Geomedicine Analyst

Vaccines and immunizations revolve around several large bodies of well-researched “hardened” facts and reliable observational studies.  Not surprising, however, is a great deal of conflation occurring in many analytical circles about the direction of immunizations.  Here are some of the best places to find many of the “hardened facts”.

• Vital Statistics – who gets sick and who dies, from what, and where.
• Immunization Statistics – who receives which vaccines, when, and where.
• Demographic & Economic Statistics – who lives where, and how many people live in what kind of household arrangement.
• Social Statistics – what people do with their lives, what education they pursue, and how much money they live on.
• Political Statistics – who is registered to vote, where they live, party affiliation, and  historical voting behavior.
• Consumer Statistics – what products and services people purchase or use, and what beliefs and aspirations drive their various purchasing behaviors.

Given these very large bodies of data containing  so much rich information about American life,  I have summarized what “signs and symptoms” I see that will impact the immunization ecosystem, at least in the  United States in the decade ahead.

• Vaccines have and will save many lives but achieving national immunization goals will remain a significant challenge.
• Children under 19 (about 23% or 77 million) of the nation’s population will  still be seen as the “future” of the nation.
• Economic anxiety over living a “fulfilling life” will impact the traditional  belief in the value of marriage and parenthood.
• Political and religious analytical segmentation of the population will grow more popular  in the conduct of health and social research.
• The public’s appreciation of the contributions of science will continue to decline among growing segments of the population.
• Greater racial and ethnic diversity will continue to be observed in almost every Census geography in the United States.

Precision immunization is coming, so become a better “analytical weaver”.  Here are a few good places (non-advocacy) to find  free “yarn”!

• Pew Research Center (some recent findings are shown below)
• USAFacts
• National Center for Health Statistic (CDC)

As Bob Dylan sang in 1978, “The times are a- changing”…. some songs never get too old!

As always, a 2^nd opinion is welcomed!