"Chan and Ridley write with an urgency...that inspires gripping
depictions of what viruses are, how infectious-disease laboratories work
and wonderfully lucid descriptions of bats. . . . They powerfully
recount how dangerous pathogens can both leak from a lab and emerge in
nature." (New York Times Book Review)
Understanding how Covid-19 started is crucial for the future of
humankind. Viral is the most incisive and authoritative book about the
search for the source of the virus.
A new virus descended on the human species in 2019 wreaking
unprecedented havoc. Finding out where it came from and how it first
jumped into people is an urgent priority, but early expectations that
this would prove an easy question to answer have been dashed. Nearly two
years into the pandemic, the crucial mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2
is not only unresolved but has deepened.
In this uniquely insightful book, a scientist and a writer join forces
to try to get to the bottom of how a virus whose closest relations live
in bats in subtropical southern China somehow managed to begin spreading
among people more than 1,500 kilometres away in the city of Wuhan. They
grapple with the baffling fact that the virus left none of the expected
traces that such outbreaks usually create: no infected market animals or
wildlife, no chains of early cases in travellers to the city, no
smouldering epidemic in a rural area, no rapid adaptation of the virus
to its new host--human beings.
To try to solve this pressing mystery, Viral delves deep into the
events of 2019 leading up to 2021, the details of what went on in animal
markets and virology laboratories, the records and data hidden from
sight within archived Chinese theses and websites, and the clues that
can be coaxed from the very text of the virus's own genetic code.
The result is a gripping detective story that takes the reader deeper
and deeper into a metaphorical cave of mystery. One by one the authors
explore promising tunnels only to show that they are blind alleys,
until, miles beneath the surface, they find themselves tantalisingly
close to a shaft that leads to the light.
