Can Virus Hunters Stop the Next Pandemic Before It Happens?

[rangerrebew]

Can Virus Hunters Stop the Next Pandemic Before It Happens?
A global project is looking to animals to map the world’s disease hotspots. Are they going about it the right way?
 
By Jim Morrison
smithsonian.com
January 25, 2018
 

Last summer, Dr. Kevin Olival joined a group of Indonesian hunters as they ventured deep into the mangrove forests of South Sulawesi island. The hunters were looking for roosting bats, mainly fruit bats and flying foxes—for them, a lucrative prize that can be shipped to villages in the north as part of the bushmeat trade. For Olival, the bats were a prize of a different sort.

Olival is a virus hunter. For more than 15 years, the ecologist and evolutionary biologist has scoured the globe for samples from animals that harbor some of the scariest undiscovered viruses as part of the global nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance. His goal: to find the next undiscovered virus in animals that harbors the ability to jump to humans and cause the next killer pandemic.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-to-stop-next-animal-borne-pandemic-180967908/#7RpCO3ba81ipVyCS.99
 

[WingNot]

Can Virus Hunters Stop the Next Pandemic Before It Happens?  A better question is; Or should they.

[Au_Jus]

Good article, thanks for sharing. 

While I agree that bats are a significant disease vector for humans they are not the only one by a long shot.  The work being done by those in the article is important but wouldn't be able to stop pandemics that resulted from other vectors.  Think Spanish Flu and SARS among others.  (btw, we dodged a bullet with SARS.)

And simply identifying viruses that may be candidates for zoonosis doesn't really help all that much.  It's only after zoonosis has occurred that we can study and understand the mechanism and then develop strategies to combat it.

Anyone interested in this subject might wish to read "Spillover" by David Quammen.  Excellent book written for the layman with a basic understanding of biology/chemistry/genetics.