Breathless, The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus is the story of SARS-CoV-2 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists who study its origin, its ever-changing nature, and its capacity to kill us. David Quammen expertly shows how strange new viruses emerge from animals into humans as we disrupt wild ecosystems, and how those viruses adapt to their human hosts, sometimes causing global catastrophe. He explains why this coronavirus will probably be a “forever virus,” destined to circulate among people and bedevil us endlessly, in one variation form or another. As scientists strive to catch it, comprehend it, and control it, with their high-tech instruments and methodologies, the virus discovers means of escape.
Based on interviews with nearly one hundred scientists, including leading virologists in China and around the world, Quammen explains that:
-Infectious disease experts saw this pandemic coming
-Some scientists, for more than two decades, warned that “the next big one” would be caused by a changeable new virus—very possibly a coronavirus—but such warnings were ignored for political or economic reasons
-The precise origins of this virus may not be known for years, but some clues are compelling, and some suppositions can be dismissed
-And much more.
Breathless takes you inside the frantic international effort to understand and control SARS-CoV-2 as if we were peering over the shoulders of the brilliant scientists who led the chase.
Few writers can honestly claim to have lived the lives of the people they write about. Quammen can, and his novels are frequently more difficult to put down than the typical thriller. Breathless is not an exception, yet it differs in a significant way. He provides us a technologically advanced detective scenario rather than a voyage through marshes and jungles with experts risking their lives to find the source of a dangerous disease. We are watching over the shoulders of scientists and researchers in various nations with varying resources and expertise, working together—not always in accord but always with respect—in an effort to outpace a serious threat to everyone. To see the mystery, the discovery and the drama from so many viewpoints, expertly and empathetically presented by a master writer, will widen anyone’s understanding.-Alan G
But one would certainly expect no less from this author. Even if I have other pressing readings on my desk (disk), this book fully engaged me until the very last word. I am a scientist and work on some aspects of SARS-CoV2 – and I too do not know everything – but still this book provided me with ample new facts and food for thought. Thanks for this magnificent achievement.-Rudi Podgornik
David Quammen is a talented science journalist, and an excellent writer. So it is very disappointing to see his very biased and incomplete treatment of the debate over the origins of Covid-19, which—despite lots of gaslighting on the subject—is still very much unresolved. He defers way too much to researchers who have clear conflicts of interest in the outcome and leaves out huge amounts of information uncovered by journalists and other scientists that show the Wuhan lab was engaged in all kinds of experimentation with SARS-like viruses which it has tried to keep hidden. That’s why NIH has now cut funding to the lab, which no mainstream journalists have covered.-M. S. Balter
David Quammen’s books include Breathless, The Tangled Tree, The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, and Spillover, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and recipient of the Premio Letterario Merck, in Rome. He has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Outside, among other magazines, and is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award. Quammen shares a home in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife, Betsy Gaines Quammen, author of American Zion, and with two Russian wolfhounds, a cross-eyed cat, and a rescue python. Visit him at DavidQuammen.com.
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