Mar 16, 2020 - Consumer goods flying off the shelves

From the Editor's Desk

The Man Who Saw the Pandemic Coming

Will the world now wake up to the global threat of zoonotic diseases?

Carroll doesn’t mean to sound callous when he says the coronavirus outbreak was predictable. And he doesn't. He sounds sympathetic to people frightened by the outbreak. He has been an eyewitness to people around the world suffering from similar viruses. Most of all, Carroll sounds authoritative.

For decades, Carroll has been a leading voice about the threat of zoonotic spillover, the transmission of pathogens from nonhuman animals to us. Scientists are confident the current outbreak, which began in Wuhan, China, stemmed from a virus inherent in bats. In 2009, after years of studying infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Carroll formed a USAID program called PREDICT, where he guided trailblazing research into viruses hiding, and waiting to emerge, in animals around the world.

"Dennis is a visionary," says Christine K. Johnson, an epidemiologist at the One Health Institute at the University of California, Davis, where she is a professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine. "He took the reactive approach to infectious diseases and turned it on its head. He said, 'We're going to work on a proactive approach to help countries prepare for the emergence of infectious diseases.'"

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