As the title suggests, “Virus Hunters” looks into the world's response to deadly pandemics, with Covid-19 being a wake-up call, from the perspective of a panel of several experts.
The series looks at what can be done to prevent the next contagion while identifying areas where humanity is most vulnerable.
As such, epidemiologist and ecologist, Christopher Golden, embarks on a mission to connect the dots while James Longman, an ABC News foreign correspondent, also seeks answers to help keep the public better informed.
With many parts of the world back in lockdown after a second wave of Covid-19 infections, “Virus Hunters” includes invaluable scientific insight provided by Jim Desmond, a disease and wildlife interventionist; Supaporn Wacharaplusadee, a virus gene tracker; Kendra Phelps, a badass bat scientist; and, last but not least, Rohit Chitale, a researcher for the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
In a recent virtual chat, Desmond said: “I’ve been doing this sort of thing - studying emerging diseases like coronavirus and Ebola - for 10 years or so. And my wife and I have been living in Africa for the past 10 years.”
He added: “From the way they described the show, I thought it was going to be a really great way to tell the sort of the big picture story of how these diseases like the coronavirus or some other emerging disease, how they get from wildlife into the human population and how a disease can be in Liberia and spread around the world.
“In addition to that, because of our work with chimpanzees, I thought it was an important way to show, not only the public health impact but what we do as humans, impact wildlife.”
Covid-19 may have taken the world by surprise. But experts in the field have predicted the possibility of this globally devastating virus.
Freeman explained: “Like I mentioned, I’ve been doing this work for the past 10 years and the thing is that people like me, we’ve been saying that something like this is going to happen.
“If you look over the past 20 years, there’s been several scares.
“There was SARS, there’s multiple Ebola outbreaks going on you know, not every year but sporadically in Africa.
“Just before SARS, it was the Zika virus. There was H1N1. So these things keep happening and they have health impacts but also economic impacts.
“We try and understand the factors that contribute to these emerging diseases that sometimes result in a local epidemic or regional epidemic or sometimes a global pandemic like this one.”
On one of the biggest takeaway from the series, Freeman revealed: “What I hope is that people realise… certainly from an economic perspective, this is costing the entire world economy trillions and trillions of dollars and for a much, much smaller investment, if you invest in doing the kind of advanced public health work, like I do, going out and trying to understand what viruses are out there, to do surveillance, you can be prepared for what’s coming.
He said, compared to the costs, it’s a more cost-effective approach and will help in strategies for protecting human life against these viruses.
The disease and wildlife interventionist added: “I think people are really curious about people like me, who do this sort of work. People are interested in understanding where these diseases come from. There’s a lot of misinformation out there.”
The first episode, which airs on Wednesday, takes place in Liberia.
“Virus Hunters” airs on National Geographic (DStv channel 181) on Wednesday, November 25, at 9pm. Check your guide for other airing times.