(Priyanka Runwal/ National Geographic) — Raul Andino knows his pathogens. For more than 30 years the University of California, San Francisco researcher has studied RNA viruses, a group that includes the virus that causes COVID-19. And yet he never imagined he’d witness a pandemic of this scale in his lifetime.
“The magnitude of it and the implications of it are still hard to comprehend,” Andino says.
Although experts in his field suspected a pandemic would occur, “it’s hard to know when,” he says. “It’s similar to an earthquake—you know the earthquake will happen, but normally you don’t think about it.” (…)