Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19

by Matt Ridley, Alina Chan, Gavin Osborn (Read by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798200857661
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	11/16/2021
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)

About the Author

Matt Ridley’s books have been short-listed for six literary awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His book The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture won the award for the best science book published in 2003 from the National Academies of Science. He has been a scientist, a journalist, and a national newspaper columnist, and he is the chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle, England. He is also a visiting professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

Dr. Alina Chan is a postdoctoral researcher with a background in medical genetics, synthetic biology, and vector engineering. At the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard, Dr. Chan is currently creating next generation vectors for human gene therapy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Chan began to investigate problems relevant to finding the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and in parallel spearheaded the development of the COVID-19 CoV Genetics (covidcg.org) browser for scientists worldwide to rapidly track virus lineages and mutations by locations and date ranges of interest.

Editorial Reviews

"Chan and Ridley write with urgency in defending why people ought to take the SARS-CoV-2 lab-leak hypothesis seriously...That urgency 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

"Viral collates a series of circumstantial but damning points in favour of the lab-leak hypothesis." — Sunday Times (London)

"Chan and Ridley's new book is a viral whodunnit that is sure to appeal to armchair detectives." — The Guardian

“Alina Chan and Matt Ridley assemble perhaps the most comprehensive case for the lab-leak theory currently available.”   — Wall Street Journal

“Both journalists and armchair detectives interested in the mystery of the coronavirus were discovering Chan as a kind of Holmes to our Watson. She crunched information at twice our speed, zeroing in on small details we’d overlooked, and became a go-to for anyone looking for spin-free explications of the latest science on COVID-19.” — Boston Globe Magazine

From the Publisher

Both journalists and armchair detectives interested in the mystery of the coronavirus were discovering Chan as a kind of Holmes to our Watson. She crunched information at twice our speed, zeroing in on small details we’d overlooked, and became a go-to for anyone looking for spin-free explications of the latest science on COVID-19.

Boston Globe Magazine

"Chan and Ridley's new book is a viral whodunnit that is sure to appeal to armchair detectives."

The Guardian

"Viral collates a series of circumstantial but damning points in favour of the lab-leak hypothesis."

Sunday Times (London)

Alina Chan and Matt Ridley assemble perhaps the most comprehensive case for the lab-leak theory currently available.”  

Wall Street Journal

"Chan and Ridley write with urgency in defending why people ought to take the SARS-CoV-2 lab-leak hypothesis seriously...That urgency 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

Alina Chan and Matt Ridley assemble perhaps the most comprehensive case for the lab-leak theory currently available.”  

Wall Street Journal