Covid-19: A Planetary Disease
Covid-19 is a planetary disease and we humans are its cause: “The animals that infected us did not come to us; we went to seek them out.’’ 1
The disease that is now called “Covid19” was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The World Health Organization declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020.
As WHO reported on 8 June 2020, by then there had been almost seven million confirmed cases of Covid-19 and almost 400,000 deaths. 2 Covid has spread to every part of the world except Antarctica, and is almost certainly under-reported in many regions. Much is still unknown, but clearly is a highly infectious disease from which (so far) most people do recover. The most vulnerable and likely to die are those who are old and have pre-existing conditions. Its socio-economic impacts will be profound.
WHAT CAUSED COVID-19?
Human beings have always caught diseases from contact with animals. Indeed, most infectious illnesses probably once were zoonotic— that is, of animal origin. Such new diseases have been increasing over the last century, for an obvious reason. Zoonotic diseases require the transmission of biological material between species, for which at least some minimal contact is needed. And there is now more human-animal contact than ever before.
What percent of all current infectious diseases are zoonotic? Estimates vary between 65% to nearly 75%. These new diseases include HIV and AIDS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), MERS, the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus, and Ebola. These are the ones we’ve heard about, but a new infectious disease emerges about every four months in humans. 3
The underlying causes include human population increase (expected to reach around 9 billion by 2050); human food crises; human conflict, decreasing animal habitat; climate change (influencing the environmental distribution of pathogens); deforestation and forest degradation; environmental devastation affecting human and animal populations; biodiversity loss, forcing animals into human contact; the breeding of animals under artificial conditions; and the capture, trade and killing of animals for human consumption, therapeutic purposes, or use as exotic pets. The illegal trade in wildlife is the fourth most lucrative global black market (estimated at around US $23 billion) after drugs, people, and arms smuggling. It explains why so many species are endangered.
Many of these factors are amplified by globalized trade, communication, criminal networks, and consumerism.
While the precise details are unclear, the primary source of the virus seems to be bats. The virus was probably passed on to another animal ( perhaps pangolins) and found its way to a Wuhan wet-market. 4 (Such markets provide animals freshly dead, dying, or alive and killed on