Page 5 - My FlipBook

CHAPTER ONE

mune systems, creating environments where diseases from dif-
ferent species can intermingle—jumping from a chicken to a hog,
for example. Soon, these diseases have the potential to become
zoonotic—meaning they can transition from animals to people. Ac-
cording to Felicia Keesing, a professor of ecology at Bard College
in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, “If we
needed to make a perfect recipe how to
make a pathogen jump, that would be it.” 6 “If we needed to make
In late 2019, a disease is believed to a perfect recipe how
have become zoonotic, jumping from either to make a pathogen
jump [from animals to
a bat or a pangolin—commonly known as a humans, an Asian wet
scaly anteater—to a person at a wet market market] would be it.” 6
in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Within weeks,
COVID-19—the disease that emerged from — Felicia Keesing, a professor
of ecology at Bard College in
the Wuhan wet market—was declared a Annandale-on-Hudson, New
worldwide pandemic. York

The Disease Spread Quickly
Deadly pandemics have occurred before. In 1347, a plague
known as the Black Death spread across Europe and beyond,
killing some 137 million people worldwide. And in the two years
following the end of World War I in 1918, the Spanish fl u spread

Vendors await customers in a Hong Kong wet
market. Scientists believe the new coronavirus,
which caused the COVID-19 pandemic,
emerged from a wet market in Wuhan, China.