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Experts say that the spread of the new coronavirus is the first in a series of epidemics that will occur at an accelerating rate.
Fauci and epidemiologist David Morens, part of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Allergies, predict an accelerating rate of pandemics in the coming years, largely due to deforestation, urban sprawl and the wet markets where game is sold. This evolution will make the continued degradation of the global environment “the key determining factor for the emergence of disease.” The information appears in a report published by the two in August, according to BuzzFeed News.
Morens told the cited source that “I don’t have a crystal ball, but what we see looks a lot like an acceleration of pandemics.”
Anthony Fauci and David Morens argued that these diseases occur more and more, either from older threats, such as the West Nile virus or antibiotic-resistant bacteria, or from wild animals to humans, particularly the deadly coronaviruses: SARS, FUE. , and now SARS-CoV-2. The classic approach to responding to each epidemic, with declarations of urgency, followed by injections of finances, must become a broader change in people’s way of life to prevent the disease, deaths, and chaos of these pandemics.
“In the last 17 years, three coronaviruses have appeared in humans.”
“Evidence suggests that SARS, MERS and COVID-19 are just the most recent examples of a wave of coronavirus and other forthcoming outbreaks,” the experts said in their report.
The number of cases of infection by the new coronavirus is approaching 26 million worldwide and deaths exceed 850,000.
Morens noted that in the last 17 years, three coronaviruses have appeared in humans after more than a century, with no new ones: “There has also been a nearly continuous outbreak of Ebola outbreaks in the last six years, a pandemic of the Ebola virus. Zika, derived from mosquitoes, and the worldwide spread of dengue hemorrhagic fever, which is also deadly. This shows more than a coincidence. “
It seems that these pandemics are a growing trend and it seems that they will happen more frequently, it is a fact, “said disease emergence expert Nikos Vasilakis, from the Galveston medical department of the University of Texas. “I don’t think it can be avoided. But it can be prevented.”
“There are many more viruses where COVID-19 came from”
There is a wide range of diseases, other than coronaviruses, that have as high a pandemic potential as the current one, experts such as Gregory Gray of the Duke Institute for Global Health told BuzzFeed News. They include illnesses that cause “deadly colds”, mosquito illnesses, paralysis due to polio, and the flu. An avian flu that leaps out of domestic birds in China has been the pandemic expected in the past ten years by infectious disease experts.
Gray and other experts said the current pandemic is an opportunity to rethink how each new disease is treated as a unique emergency. They support a shift in focus to continually reduce the risk of outbreaks where people, domestic and wild animals congregate.
Andy Dobson, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton, says “there are a lot more viruses where COVID-19 came from.”
In a document from July. Cited by American infectious disease experts, Dobson and his colleagues estimate the cost of stopping the game trade in China at $ 19.4 billion and the cost of limited human exposure to virus-carrying wildlife at less than $ 12 billion. . These amounts contrast with the estimated minimum cost of damages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic: $ 5 trillion.
“We need massive reductions in the rate of environmental degradation, both in the rainforests and in the horrible wildlife trade, otherwise the cage of emerging pathogens is wide open,” Dobson said.
The US Institute of Infectious Diseases and Allergies last week named 10 emerging disease research centers, each of which aims to investigate pathogens that could spread from wildlife to humans, such as coronavirus, SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV. -2, which came from bats.
Morens. However, he says it takes much more than that effort to protect us from future pandemics.
In their report, Fauci and Morens ask “to live in a more creative harmony and take care of nature”; otherwise, we can expect to see several pandemics like COVID-19 every few years. That, given that the world population is expected to exceed 10 billion people in this century,
In conclusion, Morens says that “we cannot predict the occurrence of a pandemic, and it is possible that this trend will simply disappear, but I would not bet on that.”
