When COVID-19 burst onto the global stage in 2020, it was deadly and disruptive. In the first weeks of January, researchers identified the cause: A coronavirus was to blame, a relative of the virus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak. Echoes of what had happened nearly 20 years earlier — thousands were infected and at least 774 people died before the SARS outbreak was brought under control — sent ripples of anxiety throughout the virology world.
Scientists of all backgrounds rushed to understand the new scourge, dubbed SARS-CoV-2. Hospitals around the world were soon overwhelmed, and daily life for billions of people was thrown into disarray. Quarantine, isolation, N95 masks and social distancing entered our collective lexicon. Breathless, by science writer David Quammen, takes readers along on the ensuing two-year scientific roller coaster.
The book is a portrait of the virus — SARS-CoV-2’s early days in China, how decades of science helped researchers craft effective vaccines within a year, the arrival of highly mutated variants. It’s not about the societal upheaval or the public health failures (and successes). While Quammen acknowledges the importance of those aspects of the pandemic, he chooses to focus on the “firehose” of scientific studies — both good and bad — that drove our understanding of COVID-19.
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