We at Crash Course and our partners Operation Outbreak
and the Sabeti Lab at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard
want to acknowledge the Indigenous people native to the land we live and work on,
and their traditional and ongoing relationship with this land.
We encourage you to learn about the history of the place you call home
through resources like native-land.ca
and by engaging with your local Indigenous and Aboriginal nations
through the websites and resources they provide.
A single virus is about one thousandth the width of a human hair.
And yet they have the capacity to wreak havoc on nearly all human life on Earth.
Although we saw this play out when the Covid-19 pandemic emerged in 2020,
it still feels a little unbelievable.
And the same big questions about infectious disease outbreaks we
had before Covid-19 are as important as ever.
What do pathogens actually do to us that makes us sick?
Why do societies respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases the way they do?
And most importantly, how can all of us help stop the next one?
These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves in what we’ll collectively call Outbreak Science,
which covers the many ways of looking at epidemics, pandemics,
and really any time an infectious disease starts affecting more people than expected.
I’m Pardis Sabeti, and welcome to Crash Course Outbreak Science!
I’m a geneticist who studies pathogens,
tiny foreign invaders that infect humans and cause disease.
I’ve spent over two decades developing genetic
tools that shed light on how our relationship to pathogens,
past and present, has shaped our history, lives and biology.
As a professor at Harvard University,
I work with an amazing collective of scientists at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
My team and I have also spent time in West Africa studying deadly viruses like Lassa and Ebola.
In 2014, we found ourselves on the front line of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.
Using genetic techniques we had been developing for years,
we helped to uncover the course of Ebola from its animal origins to humans,
and the mutations that helped it on its path.
Tracking the history of a pathogen through its genes is one fascinating part of outbreak science.
But outbreak science incorporates
lots of disciplines that help explain the mechanics of infectious diseases
and how we can intervene to break the cycle of transmission.
To tackle outbreaks, scientists use techniques from epidemiology,
anthropology, microbiology, sociology, and more
to better understand the drivers of diseases and identify the ways
we can act to keep ourselves safe.
In many ways, outbreak science is about
us and our interactions with each other and the world around us.
Over the course of this series, we’ll look at where outbreaks come from,
and how the way we live creates new risks for diseases to spring up and spread amongst us.
We’ll take a trip through the history of outbreaks, and how different pathogens,
from bacteria to viruses, have shaped civilizations, from their economies to warfare.
We’ll learn how to become germ detectives and equip ourselves with scientific methods
that let us spot, track, defend against, and even eradicate the pathogens behind infectious diseases.
And at the heart of it all, we’ll understand
the people whose actions shape how outbreaks progress– including you!
Even though diseases spread from person to person,
our capacity to connect with one another and create fair,
sustainable and resilient social systems
is one of the most powerful tools we have at keeping ourselves safe from disease.
I’ve seen this first hand, on the ground during real outbreaks,
where health professionals and scientists have collaborated,
risked their own lives, and sometimes even tragically lost them, to help others.
These remarkable acts of teamwork and heroism show the high stakes of outbreaks,
and the importance of structures that can support us in the face of future outbreaks.
So, we’ll have whole episodes about how public health organizations,
governments and even physical infrastructure like roads and computer networks
help different groups tackle and prevent outbreaks in the first place,
ultimately saving lives.
Because while it’s easy to think this all happens automatically as part of scientific progress,
in reality, systems like this come together because individuals make choices to cooperate,
consider the big picture and learn from one another.
We hope you’ll join us in learning about outbreak science, so that together,
we can go a step further in stopping outbreaks and ensure healthier futures for everyone.
Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science,
which was produced by Complexly in partnership with Operation Outbreak
and the Sabeti Lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard—
with generous support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever,
you can join our community on Patreon.