A powerful, almost invisible force has radically altered the world over the past year. It’s hard to believe something as small as the COVID-19 virus could be so potent.
How this virus came to affect our everyday lives is something we are still grappling with globally as we also work to understand how it came to be. David Quammen spoke memorably at OT 2018 and now returns to explain the complicated and unnerving threat of zoonoses. As he prophetically wrote in his 2012 book, Spillover, “The next big and murderous human pandemic, the one that kills us in millions, will be caused by a new disease--new to humans, anyway. The bug that's responsible will be strange, unfamiliar, but it won't come from outer space. Odds are that the killer pathogen--most likely a virus--will spill over into humans from a nonhuman animal.”
How we deal with the consequences of COVID is key to Laurie Garrett’s everyday thinking. An expert on global public health and a regular on MSNBC, Garrett was profiled by the New York Times in an article titled, “She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next?”. Her talk will focus on the original thinking needs to be done to build something that will save us all if we only listen to her. COVID-19 is not the first or the last virus to come at humanity, so what we understand about this unseen attacker is ever more critical.
Speakers: David Quammen, Laurie Garrett
Film: The Italian Doctor
Moderator: Sarah Holbrooke
A powerful, almost invisible force has radically altered the world over the past year. It’s hard to believe something as small as the COVID-19 virus could be so potent.
How this virus came to affect our everyday lives is something we are still grappling with globally as we also work to understand how it came to be. David Quammen spoke memorably at OT 2018 and now returns to explain the complicated and unnerving threat of zoonoses. As he prophetically wrote in his 2012 book, Spillover, “The next big and murderous human pandemic, the one that kills us in millions, will be caused by a new disease--new to humans, anyway. The bug that's responsible will be strange, unfamiliar, but it won't come from outer space. Odds are that the killer pathogen--most likely a virus--will spill over into humans from a nonhuman animal.”
How we deal with the consequences of COVID is key to Laurie Garrett’s everyday thinking. An expert on global public health and a regular on MSNBC, Garrett was profiled by the New York Times in an article titled, “She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next?”. Her talk will focus on the original thinking needs to be done to build something that will save us all if we only listen to her. COVID-19 is not the first or the last virus to come at humanity, so what we understand about this unseen attacker is ever more critical.
Speakers: David Quammen, Laurie Garrett
Film: The Italian Doctor
Moderator: Sarah Holbrooke