November 2022
This month, for the first time, I am the interviewee rather than the interviewer. This episode was recorded for the BioScience Talks podcast, which is the podcast of the journal BioScience, which recently published an article that I co-authored and which is the subject of the conversation. BioScience were kind enough to let me co-release the episode here, and it’s already been posted on BioScience Talks. It’s about science communication around Covid-19 and, in particular, the way that some of the scientific literature, and much of the media, have portrayed the relationship between land change and disease spillover risk. To be clear, my co-authors and I are not suggesting that the destruction of nature is not a key driver of spillover. There is plenty of evidence that it is. We are just pointing out why this is not always the case, and that it’s risky to imply that it is.
Links to resources:
Messaging Should Reflect the Nuanced Relationship between Land Change and Zoonotic Disease Risk - The BioScience paper discussed in this interview.
Communicating disease spillover risk during the pandemic - This same interview, on the BioScience Talks website where there is a library of others to choose from as well.