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Medicine

Interview with the Science Writer Who Predicted the Pandemic 8 Years Ago (thebulletin.org) 99

Posted by EditorDavid from the being-prepared dept.
In 1945, after atomic bomb detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, several former Manhattan Project scientists founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Publishing continuously since 1945, its current deputy editor, science writer DanDrollette, is also a Slashdot reader, and shared one of the nonprofit magazine's thought-provoking new interviews: In 2012, author David Quammen wrote a book, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, that was the result of five years of research on scientists who were looking into the possibility of another Ebola-type disease emerging. The consensus: There would indeed be a new disease, likely from the coronavirus family, coming out of a bat, and it would likely emerge in or around a wet market in China.

But what was not predictable was how unprepared we would be.

Quammen: For 15 years, scientists have said: "Watch out for coronaviruses; they could be very dangerous." And for five years, Chinese scientist Zhengli Shi at Wuhan Institute of Virology has been warning us to watch out for the coronaviruses found in Chinese bats; SARS is a coronavirus, and it came out of Chinese bats in 2003. That was very dangerous to humans, but it didn't transmit as readily as this one does. But Shi and her group saw a virus very similar to it in bats in a cave in Yunnan Province and published a paper in 2017 saying, "Watch out for these particular coronaviruses in these horseshoe bats. They necessitate the highest preparedness." That was three years ago...

Everything about this outbreak was predictable, to me and to the scientists I was listening to, 10 years ago.
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Interview with the Science Writer Who Predicted the Pandemic 8 Years Ago More

Interview with the Science Writer Who Predicted the Pandemic 8 Years Ago

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  • Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is now a bunch of crackpots. No one is going to listen to you when you continuously publish bullshit, even if you get it right once in a while. And yeah, "wet markets" are a problem. You don't have to be a "scientist" to know that.

    • Totally. How could anyone find this needle in the massive haystack of all those scientific predictions? If it weren't for all absurd the noise, [wikipedia.org] maybe science and medicine might be worth a crap. Science is just opinion anyway, and not backed by any sort of support. If only there were some kind of standardized method to it.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        If only there were some kind of standardized method to it.

        Which method we'll change — or simply ignore — when it stands in the way of the Greater Good. Such as, for example, abolish the falsifiaibility requirement in the "Climate Science" [theconversation.com].

        • If only there were some kind of standardized method to it.

          Which method we'll change — or simply ignore — when it stands in the way of the Greater Good. Such as, for example, abolish the falsifiaibility requirement in the "Climate Science" [theconversation.com].

          But I think it is, you just need to reduce it to more fundamental sciences... so for Climate Science, we'd need to reduce that to, well, chemistry and newtonian physics, then quantum mechanics, and then ultimately, pure mathematics, and... wait a minute! How is a correct mathematical proof falsifiable? Great, now mathematics is junk. I always hated math. Thanks. But quantum mechanics is also, for the most part, not falsifiable. Much of the Standard Model is not falsifiable. Cosmology I think in whole is not

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      It appears that you stepped on the third rail of political correctness by attacking the priesthood of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
      A -1 moderation with "No comment history available." The executioners at the inquisition wore black hoods as well.

  • The problem is the people predicting it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday June 13, 2020 @04:51PM (#60180160)
    are smart. And when you're smart it's hard to imagine just how dumb people can be. Especially in aggregate. I mean, if you told me in 2008 that in 2020 America would in the middle of a pandemic cut off access to medical care to 20 million people because they lost their jobs I'd have thought you were nuts. But here we are.

    • Re:The problem is the people predicting it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Saturday June 13, 2020 @05:55PM (#60180314)

      > if you told me in 2008 that in 2020 America would in the middle of a pandemic cut off access to medical care to 20 million people because they lost their jobs I'd have thought you were nuts

      Why? Health care in America has always been pay to play. Lose your job, you lose your health insurance unless you have enough savings to tap into - which most American's don't. And then you get the best medical care no money can buy. Take an aspirin and don't bother calling me in the morning. Why would you think a pandemic would make any difference to the fiercely "I've got mine, go fuck yourself" mentality that governs the U.S. economy in basically all other situations?

      Don't worry, there's a nice public safety net in Medicaid - all you have to do is qualify, which involves first liquidating and spending all significant assets you own. After all we don't want to help out people with cars, houses, retirement funds, or anything else that they could liquidate to pay their own way. That would go against the "every man for himself" American spirit. We're not heartless, we'll keep you from starving to death, but only after you've fallen so far that you're going to have to start from scratch financially.

      • figured that when a problem like that came up we'd all band together and fix it.

        You're right about Medicaid. I've tangled with it and it's not a public safety net.

        We only keep you from starving to death because that's the point where people form roving bands of bandits.

        • You're more optimistic than I am. I'm trying to think of the last time we all pulled together to fix a problem that didn't affect the rich, and nothing springs to mind.

      • Take an aspirin and don't bother calling me in the morning.

        The actual words to the song are "You put the lime in the coconut and call me in the morning".

      • Health care in America has always been pay to play. Lose your job, you lose your health insurance unless you have enough savings to tap into

        "always"?. No. All of your lifetime, sure. But the country is older than that.

        Employer-provided health insurance (which really isn't insurance, for the most part, in the sense that every other sort of insurance is insurance) is a new thing. A workaround (or loophole) used to get around FDR's wage controls, and which was later used as a way to provide compensation to employees that was not subject to tax (or loophole).

        Prior to that people paid cash (or made time payments) for routine things, and used f

        • How is paying insurance yourself, or paying for service directly, not still "pay-to-play" for receiving medical services?

          Used to be Americans had a lot more savings so that you could still pay for insurance when you lost your job, or even pay directly for some modest medical care. But if you couldn't afford the bill you still died on the street. Though I have heard rumors that medical care used to be dramatically cheaper, and doctors more kind-hearted, so your chances of being able to afford medical servi

          • If you local library does not have the book, perhaps you can borrow it via interlibrary loan.

            You might learn something. I sure did.

            _From mutual aid to the welfare state : fraternal societies and social services, 1890-1967_, by David T Beito. https://www.worldcat.org/searc... [worldcat.org]

        • I beg you .. let's not tell tales about our wonderful health insurance system. This is a story for those who can still afford a lot. It turned out to be easier for me to take herbal medicines instead of going to the doctor - https://provacan.co.uk/cbd-gummies/ [provacan.co.uk] And my example is not the only one. It’s stupid to keep paying for something that cannot protect you.

          • Slashdot says you're replying to my message. Your message content suggests otherwise.

            I beg you .. let's not tell tales about our wonderful health insurance system.

            I wasn't.

            But since you brought it up: it sucks. It provides disincentives for good things, incentives for bad things. People do unpleasant things to get or keep "insurance". Entire books have been written about bad it is.

            Layering ObamaCare on top of it just puts some lipstick on the pig. (Actually, I wish that was all it did. Not the best metaphor.)

            Better metaphor: More like diarrhea icing on a turd pie.

    • Re: The problem is the people predicting it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by matt328 ( 916281 ) on Saturday June 13, 2020 @05:58PM (#60180322)
      Itâ(TM)s one thing to choose not to believe a prediction but this already happened and there are still people choosing not to believe it happened. Thank you coronavirus for showing me just exactly how dumb humans still are.
    • "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." -- George Carlin
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rh6qqsmxNs
    • It's also a case of the million monkey effect, people are making random comments about almost everything all of them time, all you need to do is search back over a long enough time period and find a vague enough proclamation and everything ever will be "predicted" in advance at one time or another. So yeah, somewhat interesting, but not really earth-shaking.

  • David Quammen interview from 2012 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tim the Gecko ( 745081 ) on Saturday June 13, 2020 @05:05PM (#60180190)
    There's a 2012 interview with David Quammen on C-SPAN's booktv [c-span.org]. He describes how human activity can change the way diseases propagate. For example, pigs in Malaysia were exposed to infection from fruit bats just because of the farmers planting mango trees near pigsties.

  • If this isn't a lesson (Score:4, Insightful)

    by t4eXanadu ( 143668 ) on Saturday June 13, 2020 @05:11PM (#60180208)

    If this pandemic, as well as previous (and future ones) aren't a wake up a call to make people realize Scientists should have more of a hand in politics, nothing will. This isn't any one person's fault. Scientists also have to choose to run be more civically engaged. This is hard, I know this as being in the sciences myself. We generally want to conduct our research and investigate nature, and social and political issues often feel like a distraction to that. However, if you're not engaged at all, then eventually others will be limiting your scientific enterprises in one way or another, be it through lack policy or overzealous policy.

    We need more scientifically oriented politicians, or more politically oriented scientists, playing a larger role in society. In general, we need political leaders to give scientists more influence over policy. In the US, at least, lawyers and business people have an outsized influence on politics. This is not new by any means, but the detriment of it is becoming ever more clear.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      Scientist should not have more say in politics as other people. Scientists should do what they are good at: doing modelling, finding things out, inventing new ways to test current theories. Being a good scientist for instance in Physics does not make you a good scientist in Biology, and being able to design interesting experiments does not make you a good decision maker.

      There are scientists, who are able politicians. There are carpenters who are good decision makers. There are novel writers with a knack f

      • I see a difference because it's fine to have a government which neither contains nor consults with novelists or carpenters, but a government with no scientists and which does not consult with scientists would be preposterous. Albeit "scientists" is broad, and a government void of relativity theorists and astronomers would be preferable to the one with no environmental scientists, and even then, they needn't be experts on ecosystems on other continents. They should be confident enough to read medical reports
    • Undereducated people think scientists sound condescending and elitist. Many scientists are atheists or agnostics, and speak too plainly for public office.

      • Re:If this isn't a lesson (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Saturday June 13, 2020 @10:22PM (#60180760)

        It's a waste of their expertise putting scientists in office, not to mention any scientist who could win an election probably isn't the one you want in power anyway.

        Just elect politicians who aren't too dumb to listen to experts.

        • Just elect politicians who aren't too dumb to listen to experts.

          I have a huge investment in electric flying pigs. Would you like to buy some shares? They are very fond of lipstick, and quite fashionable.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • SARS and MERS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday June 13, 2020 @05:31PM (#60180240)

    People forget that SARS and MERS were scaring the world at the time ... this wasn't that hard to speculate. It wasn't totally unexpected .. if this prediction was made before SARS (2003) or MERS (2009) then yeah I'd be like maybe it was prescienct.

    • Actually MERS was emerging and in teh news right around the time of this article (2012). .. So yeah it wasn't some mighty fantastical prediction.

    • I was predicting that there would be a disaster of this kind in the 1960's, but featuring plague.

      I also predicted the football pools for many years with limited success.

      If you shoot enough arrows into the air, one of them is bound to hit something eventually.

      In case you are interested, I am currently predicting another civil war in America - and Puerto Rico will win!

  • Sent someone to a cave named LV-426 to retrieve a specimen for study...

  • Lets put a finer point on this. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday June 13, 2020 @05:45PM (#60180278)

    But what was not predictable was how unprepared we would be.

    What was actually not predictable was that when the inevitable pandemic hit that we would have a U.S. president that would undo the preparations put in place by the prior administration.

    That isn't to say that we would have been well prepared. Just that we would have been much better off if that hadn't happened.

  • Someone please make an interview with the guy who said 2020 is going to be the year of the impeccable hindsight and "I told you so!".

  • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • 9/11 (Score:1)

    by reanjr ( 588767 )

    The U.S. knew 9/11 was coming and did nothing. We don't do preparedness for rare events. That requires Congress to approve funding for something that's unlikely to happen before the next election. That's not gonna happen.

  • Corona virus the most widespread but other dangers lurking. No easy answers. But awareness helps. COVID-19 is deadly to some but expensive to us all. One patient received a $1 million USD hospital bill. Massive unemployment and depressed economies hit most others. https://www.cdc.gov/drugresist... [cdc.gov]

  • You only hear about the handful that got it right, not the hoards that got it wrong. Predictions like that, that far out, are just guesses, and only slightly educated at that. Don't give them credit just because they turned out to be right. Only if they have sound reasoning, hard evidence, and are drawing logical, unambiguous conclusions.

    Some of them are like Nostradamos, who had a bunch of predictions come true, until you look and realize he wrote thousands of predictions, most of which never came true

  • This warning is from 2007, from a journal (Score:3)

    by Beeftopia ( 1846720 ) on Sunday June 14, 2020 @12:57AM (#60181032)

    This warning is from 2007, from a journal:

    "The findings that horseshoe bats are the natural reservoir for SARS-CoV-like virus and that civets are the amplification host highlight the importance of wildlife and biosecurity in farms and wet markets, which can serve as the source and amplification centers for emerging infections.
    [...]
    The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored."

    -- "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus as an Agent of Emerging and Reemerging Infection" [nih.gov]

    • Perhaps the TRUE cause is leaders did not understand what pandemic meant - and still don't . You need to combine Pandemic with unemployment, lockdowns and hostile voters. They even get scientists and MO's on soapboxes to absorb the coming voter backlash. Yeah, most thought - 'USA / Brazil / Italy' are different. It won't get us. There are very few countries where illegal immigration is stopped. Like Singapore, the poorest invisible illegal will spread that fruit in new not so baffling waves - or it could b
  • ... or was he just one of the first to write a book about it? The animal-spillover pandemic concept, and resulting predictions, have been tossed around and discussed in scientific and medical circles for a long while. Maybe he was just the first to write a book about it.

  • In after of 2 pandemics some shitbrains says "gee golly there might be a pandemic" and another shitbrains remembers a few years later

    gee golly, give this man keys to the city, he's a fuckin genius

  • Watch a interview of the author [youtube.com], David Quammen, by two Scientific American staff.

    Note that Quammen is not a scientist. He is a science writer, who authored many books, and does a thorough job at that.

    He does talk to the experts, and writes down what they say.

    For when he asked the experts on the next pandemic, they said that the next pandemic will be:

    a) a virus (influenza, coronavirus, or paramyxovirus)
    b) jumps from animals,
    c) has an RNA genetic code,
    d) respiratory spread

    This is not magic or prophecy. It is

  • Is paying for the bread you eat "pay to play"? Or the car you drive or the internet connectivity you use "pay to play". Obviously not.

    The term "pay to play" is normally used to describe political corruption. An informal illegal fee (i.e. bribe) paid secretly or ostensibly for another purpose (i.e. bribing) to a politician or other official in order to be considered for a position or to do business with a government (i.e. corruption).

    If a government or business were to donate to a foundation set up by a

  • Yes, a huge pandemic was a risk (still is).
    So is running out of fresh water.
    So is climate change.
    So is overpopulation.
    So is global nuclear war.
    So is terrorism.
    So are the terrible things happening in China/mideast/Yemen/to blacks/to the rohinga/to Indians 150 years ago/to natives when the conquistadors arrived/to the natives when they got sick because of Europeans/etc... ...that eventually, normal people who have to go to work each day to provide for their families run out of energy "caring" about everything

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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

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