An interview with Olmo Parenti In his seventh week of sheltering in place in Milano, Italy, the filmmaker Olmo Parenti called the science writer and explorer David Quammen. He was sheltering in his home in Bozeman, Montana. Olmo had read Quammen’s 2012 book: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic; and asked Quammen how he was able to predict 8 years ago the rise of the Coronavirus pandemic. Olmo Parenti is a member of “A THING BY” a collective of young filmmakers based in Milan.
David Quammen has won many awards for his books and magazine articles, including from the National Association of Science Writers. His work with National Geographic is best known, and has taken him on many difficult treks through the wild, such as chronicling J. Michael Fay’s 2,000 mile survey hike through the forests of Central Africa, The Megatransect.
In the course of his travels and studies David Quammen has come in contact with emerging diseases — such as Ebola, SARS, bird flu, and AIDS — and with the wildlife they emerge from. Spillover, the rite of his book, is a scientific term, it is the moment when such a virus passes from wild animals into people.
DATE: – Apr 23, 2020
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