Zoonotic:
Pertaining to a zoonosis: a disease that can be transmitted from animals to people or, more specifically, a disease that normally exists in animals but that can infect humans. There are multitudes of zoonotic diseases. …
Zoonoses may appear suddenly and be relatively virulent, as illustrated by HIV which ignited the AIDS epidemic and the coronavirus responsible for the outbreak of SARS. [MedicineNet]
Noted in “Specter of possible new virus emerging from central China raises alarms across Asia,”Gerry Shih and Lena H. Sun, WaPo:
There are no known U.S. cases or any cases in any countries outside China, the CDC said. “But outbreaks of unknown respiratory disease are always of concern, particularly when there are possible zoonotic origins to the outbreak,” the CDC statement said.
And here’s an informal example of Famous Last Words:
Xu Jianguo, a former top Chinese public health official, struck an assuring note and said the government’s disease control capabilities today are much stronger than they were in the early 2000s.
“More than a decade has passed,” he said. “It’s impossible for something like SARS to happen again.”
