Opinion: Carl Zimmer on Covid, singing, and going ‘Air-Borne’
While covering Covid, science writer Carl Zimmer learned how little we know about air and how it affects disease transmission. He turned that work into his new book, “Air-Borne.”
Tuesday marked the fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring Covid-19 a global pandemic. For science writer Carl Zimmer, a columnist for the New York Times, covering Covid meant “watching [scientists] figuring out this disease in real time.” Notably, “there were a lot of mysteries about it. I was really struck as, as others were, by how strange it was that, that the just a fundamental question of how Covid spread was so unclear and was leading to so much argument,” he said.
Intrigued by both the public and scientific confusion over airborne infection, he began examining history. Eventually, he realized, “I’m writing about life in the air, and it turns out to have this incredible history that goes back many centuries and involves all sorts of people.”
