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We should already start thinking about the next possible virus. Really, you might object, why should we think about the next virus when the covid-19 pandemic is still spreading around the world? Because when the SARS epidemic began in the early 2000s, we didn’t think about the next possible epidemic. The result was that we did not avoid what we could have avoided, the ongoing covid-19 pandemic that was likely established in the same way as SARS.
New emerging diseases, not only covid-19 and SARS, but also AIDS, Ebola, and Marburg fever, have not occurred spontaneously in humans. These are animal diseases (called zoonoses) that have been transmitted from host animals to humans. They have also not been transferred to us through animals with which we are only related, such as fish or shrimp, although we often have contact with fish and shrimp. Instead, they have mainly reached us through other mammals, our closest relatives among animals.
The reason is obvious: a microbe adapts to its host’s internal chemical environment. Therefore, it is more favorable to move to a new host if its internal chemical environment is similar to the chemical environment of the previous host. We are mammals, not fish or shrimp, so most of our zoonoses are gifts from other mammals.
In China, there are many such markets where wild animals, dead or alive, are sold for food or other purposes.
Sars was transferred to humans in Chinese wildlife markets. In China, there are many such markets where wild animals, dead or alive, are sold for food or other purposes. The sars came to us through sibet cats, small predators, which in turn had received bat sars. Otherwise, most people would never have had close contact with a sibet cat, but hunters search for them and other wild animals and deliver prey to animal markets.
If a vicious alien were to try to develop the most effective method of infecting people with zoonoses, the best way would be to gather as many mammals as possible with as many people as possible. The brilliant solution from aliens: a Chinese wildlife market.
Hunters who supply animal markets do not hunt a specific species: they hunt many species. The hunter is not content to just sit in the woods, eat the fallen animal and catch it. The markets are full of buyers, who can get infected.
There are, of course, markets for wildlife in countries other than China. But Chinese markets are particularly effective in launching epidemics because China has the majority of the world’s inhabitants and, thanks to high-speed trains, planes and cars, they are increasingly interconnected.
Health care representatives have known these data for many years about the connection between animals and new diseases affecting humans, as well as the ideal conditions for disease transmission offered by Chinese markets. The spread of SARS through the markets should have led China to wake up and close them. But the markets remained open.
All of these viruses appear to be derived from bats and can be transmitted through other animals that act as bridges.
When covid-19 grew In Wuhan in December 2019, the infection was suspected to be coming from the local market. Although it has not yet been confirmed, everything indicates that the infection can be attributed to the wildlife trade. Covid-19 is caused by a coronavirus that is closely related to the coronaviruses that were behind the previous zoonotic epidemics, the saras and the groupers. All of these viruses appear to be derived from bats and can migrate to us through other animals that act as bridges. In the case of the sars, these were wormwood farms that were sold in animal markets.
Anthill.
Photo: Sakchai Lalit / AP
Initially, the Chinese government downplayed the significance of the covid-19 outbreak. But then the reaction became powerful. Measures were implemented on a scale the world had never seen before to limit the spread of the infection. It appears to have had a dramatically positive effect. China also tried to prevent the emergence of more zoonoses by closing markets and eventually halting the trade in wildlife meant to be eaten.
That’s the good news. But there are also bad guys. The government, with the help of the bans, has not attempted to block the other major contact between wildlife and people in China: the trade in live animals used in traditional medicine. It is a large market segment that includes many different animal species and a large number of customers. For example, in traditional Chinese medicine, tons of scales from the small mammal that eats ants are used because they are believed to be good for fever, skin infections, and STDs. If a microbe in a mammal awaits the opportunity to infect humans, it doesn’t matter if people buy the animal from a food market or from a dealer specializing in traditional medicine.
The quagmies marketed for parts of the Chinese population are more than just delicacies.
To Westerners this seems obvious. How is it possible that the almighty Chinese government, capable in a few days of total isolation of millions of people, still cannot quickly and definitively stop the wildlife trade? The quagmies marketed for parts of the Chinese population are more than just delicacies. A more relevant analogy would be the reactions if science discovered that cheese and red wine create recurrent epidemics. How would the French respond to a global ban on bans?
For a proportion of the population In China, wild animals are a more fundamental part of the culture than cheese and red wine in France. But despite these cultural challenges, China and other governments around the world must act quickly and decisively to stop the wildlife trade.
If not, we can say with certainty that sars and covid-19 will not be the last worldwide epidemics. There will be more, provided that wild animals are widely exploited in the food trade and for other purposes, not only in China but also in other parts of the world. Sars let us out relatively “gently”; fewer than a thousand dead, compared to a seasonal flu that kills hundreds of thousands each year. Covid-19 does not let us escape so easily.
There is nothing to say that future epidemics could not require hundreds of millions of deaths.
It affects the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. The virus that follows covid-19 could do even more than that. The world is increasingly interconnected. It is not said that future epidemics cannot demand hundreds of millions of deaths and lead the world to a depression of several decades without a historical counterpart.
The risk of it happening it would decrease significantly if wildlife trade ceased. That would not mean that the Chinese government did the rest of the world a favor. Instead, it would mean that the Chinese did themselves a favor. Like the covid-19 outbreak, they are at risk of becoming the first victims of the next virus to come out of the animal trade.
English translation: Per Svensson
