David Quammen

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Elephants bathing at Langoué Baï in Ivindo National Park, Gabon. George Vlad/Getty Images

ReflexionesNaturaleza

Blood doesn’t flow through our arteries and veins by gravity or magic or the force of our personalities. It is pushed. What pushes it is an elaborately engineered muscle (or muscular organ) that serves as a pump: the heart. Without the continuing, impelling action of that pump, the rest dies. The heart can survive without a right hand attached to the body in which it beats, or without a left eye, or even without one of the two kidneys; but the kidney or the eyeball or the hand can’t survive without the heart. I am belaboring this obvious biological fact for the sake of analogy.…  Seguir leyendo »

Si la pandemia ya no es una emergencia de salud pública, entonces, ¿qué es?

InternacionalSalud Pública,

Por ahora, la sirena que marca el fin de alerta sonó, aunque la guerra no ha terminado. El 5 de mayo, el director general de la Organización Mundial de la Salud, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, anunció que la COVID-19 ya no es una “emergencia de salud pública de importancia internacional”: una ESPII.

Esa declaración señala la entrada en una fase diferente de la batalla colectiva de la humanidad contra el coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. ¿Significa esto que la pandemia ha terminado? No. ¿Es prematura la declaración? Las opiniones de los expertos difieren. ¿Cómo será esta siguiente fase de la COVID-19 en los próximos años y décadas?…  Seguir leyendo »

El viaje evolutivo de la COVID-19 ha sido funesto e impresionante

InternacionalSalud Pública, ,

La pandemia de COVID-19 ha sido una lección sobre la velocidad: la velocidad con que un nuevo virus se puede propagar entre los humanos; la velocidad con que puede acumular muertes y paralizar economías; la velocidad a la que se pueden desarrollar y producir vacunas, y la velocidad con que la desinformación puede perjudicar la salud pública. En medio de toda esa rapidez hay un tipo distinto de velocidad, que impulsa a las demás, como el motor que hace girar vertiginosamente las cabinas de las atracciones de feria: la velocidad de la evolución vírica.

El coronavirus, como muchos otros virus de su clase (virus de ARN con genomas muy variables), evoluciona deprisa.…  Seguir leyendo »

And Then the Gorillas Started Coughing

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,

The noises of nature sometimes carry broader meanings. The howl of a wolf signifies that wildness endures. The gronk of Canada geese moving south overhead reminds Americans to brace for winter. The sound of a coughing gorilla signals that Covid-19 is an even bigger problem than we thought.

Early last month, two gorillas started coughing at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, a compound of open-air enclosures for wild animals, an annex to the city zoo but separate, out in an arid valley just east of Escondido. These gorillas were among a group of eight residing amiably there, on a patch of artfully constructed habitat known as the Gorilla Forest.…  Seguir leyendo »

Un joven zorro volador de cabeza gris en Victoria, Australia. Credit Annette Ruzicka

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,  

El orden de animales conocido como los quirópteros, los murciélagos, tiene una reputación poco entusiasta entre los humanos. Para decirlo de manera cordial: han sido calumniados y abusados durante siglos.

Algunas personas, principalmente desde la comodidad de la distancia y la ignorancia, perciben a los murciélagos como repulsivos y tenebrosos. Algunas personas les temen, con o sin fundamentos racionales. En ocasiones, los murciélagos son masacrados en grandes cantidades, indefensos en los lugares colectivos donde se cuelgan, cuando las personas los consideran amenazadores, inconvenientes, nocivos o deseables como comida.

La idea de una sopa de murciélago o murciélago rostizado produce repugnancia entre los comensales sensibles de Occidente, pero eso no es consuelo para las decenas de miles de zorros voladores (como se le conoce al más grande de los murciélagos frugívoros del Mundo Antiguo) que han sido cazados de manera legal por su carne y como deporte en Malasia en los últimos años.…  Seguir leyendo »

A young grey-headed flying fox in Victoria, Australia. Ancient literature and folklore record a long list of anti-bat beliefs. Some people also blame bats for carrying dangerous pathogens, including, potentially, the precursor of the new coronavirus. Credit Annette Ruzicka

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,  

The order of animals known as Chiroptera, the bats, enjoys a mixed reputation among humans. I’m putting this politely: They have been calumniated and abused for centuries.

Some people, mainly from the comfort of distance and ignorance, find bats repellent and spooky. Some people fear them, with or without rational grounds. Bats are sometimes slaughtered in large numbers, defenseless at their collective roosts, when people deem them menacing, inconvenient, noxious or desirable as food.

The idea of bat soup or roasted bat may induce cringes in sensitive Western eaters, but that’s no consolation to the tens of thousands of flying foxes (as the largest of the Old World fruit bats are known) that have been legally hunted for meat and sport in Malaysia in recent years.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica, ,

There’s nothing like an outbreak of Ebola virus disease to bring a small, struggling African nation to international notice. One week we couldn’t place it on a map; the next week, after Ebola virus disease strikes, we know the body count and the name of the capital and whether its airport has closed.

This sad distinction now attaches to Guinea, a country of 11.5 million, in which the latest of Africa’s viral tribulations was reported by the World Health Organization, upon notification from Guinea’s Ministry of Health, on March 23. As of Tuesday the toll was 157 confirmed or suspected Ebola cases, including 101 deaths.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública,

Terrible new forms of infectious disease make headlines, but not at the start. Every pandemic begins small. Early indicators can be subtle and ambiguous. When the Next Big One arrives, spreading across oceans and continents like the sweep of nightfall, causing illness and fear, killing thousands or maybe millions of people, it will be signaled first by quiet, puzzling reports from faraway places — reports to which disease scientists and public health officials, but few of the rest of us, pay close attention. Such reports have been coming in recent months from two countries, China and Saudi Arabia.

You may have seen the news about H7N9, a new strain of avian flu claiming victims in Shanghai and other Chinese locales.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública,

Bad news is always interesting, especially when it starts small and threatens to grow large, like the little cloud on the distant horizon, no bigger than “a man’s hand”, that is destined to rise as a thunderhead (1 Kings 18:44). That’s why we read so avidly about the recent outbreaks of Ebola virus disease among villages in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and about West Nile fever in the area around Dallas (where 15 have died of it since July). And that’s why, early this month, heads turned toward Yosemite National Park after the announcement of a third death from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome among recent visitors there.…  Seguir leyendo »