This week marks two pandemic “anniversaries” — the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020, and former President Trump declared it a national emergency two days later.
Tragically, there have been more than a half million deaths in the United States and more than 2.6 million globally since then.
To mark these dates, I asked a range of people, from clinicians on the frontlines to virus watchers, vaccine makers, and public health specialists, to share their answers to this question: What was the moment last year when you realized we were in real trouble?
By David Quammen: The “moment last year” when I realized the world was in real trouble occurred about 10 years ago.
I was finishing work on my book “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.” I had asked some of the smartest infectious disease scientists I knew these questions: Will there be a Next Big One, a pandemic of infection that sweeps the globe and kills millions of people? If so, what will it look like?
The consensus of what they told me, which I published in the book in 2012, was this: Yes, there will be a Next Big One. It will be caused by a virus new to humans that has emerged from a wild animal. That virus could well be an influenza or a coronavirus; the wild animal could well be a rodent, a primate, or a bat; and the spillover could well occur in or near a “wet market” in some country where wildlife is sold as food amid other food products and where an infected person might easily reach an internationally connected airport. We can’t say when this will happen, but it will happen.
The moment last year when I realized, more immediately, that the world could be in real trouble was on Jan. 13, 2020, when I was reading an
