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Aeon

28 mins | May 13, 2020

A lunar pandemic

What can we learn from the pandemic that never was? During the Apollo missions, NASA feared that astronauts coming back from the Moon would bring pathogens that could result in a deadly pandemic, much similar to the one the world was facing in 1969 (the H3N2 flu virus) and the one it is battling today (COVID-19). For this, the space agency established 'strict' quarantine rules and reassured the public that "that its ‘unparalleled’ and ‘exhaustive’ preparations had left nothing to chance." But did they? Associate professor of environmental history at Georgetown University, Dagomar Degroot, explores in Aeon magazine.