Sean Bellamy Mcnulty

“That the AIDS pandemic is traceable to a single contingent event. That this event involved a bloody interaction between one chimpanzee and one human. That it occurred in southeastern Cameroon, around the year 1908, give or take. That it led to the proliferation of one strain of virus, now known as HIV-1 group M. That this virus was probably lethal in chimpanzees before the spillover occurred, and that it was certainly lethal in humans afterward. That from southeastern Cameroon it must have traveled downriver, along the Sangha and then the Congo, to Brazzaville and Léopoldville. That from those entrepôts it spread to the world.”
― David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

“At dawn the boy bathes, then stays awake until late afternoon, pacing and expectant, at which point the circumciser comes at him with a homemade knife. “I nursed my wound for 45 days after,” one initiate said.”
― David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

“Worobey’s work directly refuted the OPV hypothesis. If HIV-1 existed in humans as early as 1908, then obviously it hadn’t been introduced via vaccine trials beginning in 1958.”
― David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

“SYROTUCK ANALYZED 229 search and rescue cases (11 percent of them fatal) and concluded that almost three quarters of those who died perished within the first forty-eight hours of becoming lost.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why