Fearnley, Lyle. (2020). Virulent zones: animal disease and global health at China’s Pandemic epicenter. Durham, Duke University Press. 296 pp. Book review for New Genetics and Society.

Virulent Zones challenges recent scientific and journalistic identifications of China as a pandemic epicenter, which have mapped a “geography of blame” where traditional ecologies are marked as “natural reservoirs of deadly viruses” (23). Conversely, Fearnley shows how the complex interplay between science, geopolitics, socioeconomics and culture have produced certain narratives of virulent zones in certain places. Virulent Zones is based on participant observation and interviews carried out in 2010–2012 with virologists, veterinarians, wild-bird trackers and farmers in agrarian landscapes of southern China.

Throughout this ethnography, communication importantly emerges as a key tool to fight a pandemic. In a postscript, Fearnley refers to this important point while drawing on the COVID-19 pandemic, and he strongly criticizes the resulting backlashes against the farming, trade and consumption of wild animals in China. Fearnley points out that the calls to permanently ban all wildlife trade are not a final solution to the problem of zoonotic disease risks, since such a ban would most likely drive wildlife markets underground – where they will be even less transparent to veterinary governance that they are now. What is needed is, instead, a better communication and an engaged collaboration between experts and farmers, traders and consumers. Ultimately, Virulent Zones shows how science and geopolitics intersect and how this has an important impact on global health. As such, it is a key text for medical anthropologists and sociologists, historians of science, STS researchers, and those working in global health.