Super Spreaders
This place was not the origin of SARS, but it was considered the gateway for international exposure.
What is Hong Kong?
Quammen notes this specific clinical characteristic - the fact that these appear before a patient becomes highly contagious - was humanity's greatest stroke of luck in containing SARS.
What are visible symptoms?
These open-air commercial spaces in southern China, filled with stacks of cages containing wild mammals, reptiles, and birds for slaughter, provided the ideal conditions for zoonotic spillover.
What are "wet markets" ?
This structural surface component of the coronavirus acts as the physical "key" that must bind to a host cell to initiate infection.
What is the Spike (S) glycoprotein?
This flying mammal was eventually determined by scientists to be the true, natural reservoir host of SARS.
What is a bat?
This massive housing complex in Hong Kong became a horrific community super spreading event when a faulty sewage system aerosolized the virus across high-rise blocks.
What was Amoy Gardens?
This Italian epidemiologist and WHO physician recognized that an outbreak of atypical pneumonia in Hanoi was an unprecedented global threat, ultimately sacrificing his life to the disease.
Who is Carlo Urbani?
Evidence of coronavirus found in these two animals.
What are Civets and Raccoon dogs?
February 2003, SARS was spread on a plane from Hong Kong to this city, where it infected several hundred and killed 31 at a hospital.
What is Toronto?
To find the virus in the wild without killing the bats, researchers had to collect and test these specific biological samples from the floor of dark caves.
What are fecal samples / bat droppings?
This nickname was given to Seafood wholesaler, Zhou Zuofeng, the first superspreader.
What is “The Poison King”?
SARS seemed to flourish in these facilities, where high rates of infection and lethality were concentrated.
What is hospitals?
This specific type of subterranean landscape ecosystem serves as the remote, primary habitat where horseshoe bats maintain viral lineages away from human contact.
What are limestone caves?
The live-animal supply chain described by Quammen acts as an artificial version of this ecological concept, bridging deep, remote wilderness spaces directly with urban hubs.
What is an ecological corridor?
This prominent Chinese virologist, nicknamed the "Bat Woman" of China, led the intense field expeditions into remote caves to uncover the bat origin of SARS.
Who is Shi Zhengli?
The ninth floor of this location became the location of the second superspreader event.
What is the Metropole hotel?
This mathematical epidemiological metric represents the average number of secondary cases generated by a single infected person in a fully susceptible population.
What is the Basic Reproduction Number (R-0)?
China initially banned the sale of civets, but later revised to allow for this.
What are farm grown civets?
This province of 'ravenous carnivores', where the list of animals considered delectable “could be mistaken for the inventory of a pet store or zoo”.
What is Guangdong?
Following the slaughter of thousands of civets, scientists realized the virus didn't originate there because wild civets lacked this type of defense molecule against it.
What are antibodies?
This country enacted strict infection control measures early in the outbreak, including fines for people caught spitting.
What is Singapore?
Epidemiologists tracing the absolute first known cases of the outbreak discovered that the very earliest victims in Guangdong province shared this specific occupation, long before the virus hit the Metropole Hotel.
What are food handlers (or chefs/restaurateurs dealing with wild game)?
Following the SARS crisis, live animal markets were temporarily tamer, forcing this culturally embedded, luxury wild-flavor meat trade to do this.
What is go underground?
When epidemiologists calculated the case fatality rate (CFR) for SARS, they found it was highly stratified by age, jumping to a devastating percentage of over this amount for patients aged 60 and older.
What is 50%?
The "Dinner at the Rat Farm" chapter notes that these popular, non-bat rodents are poor candidates for a natural SARS reservoir because they are raised in clean, controlled domestic conditions rather than interacting with wild ecosystems.
What are bamboo rats?