Given the overwhelming amount of news right now about the COVID-19 pandemic, it's easy to lose track of why we are in this situation. The new coronavirus that causes this deadly respiratory disease leapt to humans from another species — likely bats — and is inherently linked to human impact on the environment.
Scientists have been warning us about the threat of viruses and bacteria transferring from animals to humans for a long time. And they say COVID-19, which has claimed more than 50,000 lives across the United States, isn't the worst-case scenario when it comes to zoonotic disease. What comes next could be far, far more devastating.
HuffPost reporter Chris D'Angelo and freelancer Jimmy Tobias dug into what could come next if we don't do more to curb the environmental destruction behind the spread of these diseases. Must Reads talked to them about their story.
Did writing this article freak you out? Because editing it kind of freaked me out.
It didn’t freak us out exactly, but it was pretty sobering to realize that humanity itself is largely to blame for the age of pandemics that we are all living through right now. We are screwing up the planet so bad — harming wildlife, disrupting habitat, invading intact forests — that we are actually causing the sort of zoonotic spillover events that lead to deadly diseases like COVID-19.
Reporting this story was also grimly fascinating, even a little exciting in a way. It was a pleasure to get to talk to committed scientists who have been studying disease ecology for decades and who saw this current crisis coming from a mile away. It’s not every day you get to open a story with a scene from a spooky pandemic called the goat plague.
What surprised you most in reporting this story?
I think what surprised us most was how matter-of-factly experts talk about the threat. Most people give little to no thought to the threat of emerging zoonotic disease, much less the drivers, but anyone in this field will tell you that a pandemic like the one we are now facing was all but inevitable. By destroying intact ecosystems and trading wildlife products, we are essentially rolling the dice every day — and increasingly doing so with dice loaded against us.
What are the most meaningful things that could be done to stem the spread of zoonotic diseases?
First and foremost, people should listen to the science, stay inside, social distance, don’t be one of those dupes waving flags and protesting in crowds on statehouse lawns. Stopping COVID-19 is the top priority right now. We could also “give a shit about nature,” as the saying goes. We could preserve and expand land protections instead of scrapping them, not open pristine ecosystems to drilling and mining, not bulldoze the Amazon rainforest. We could start investing serious money in pandemic preparedness and prevention, which would no doubt save money in the long run.
Unfortunately, the current White House has all the wrong priorities when it comes to environmental and public health, so not much will change unless Washington changes.
What do you want readers to take away from reading this?
Simply, that it doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, disease will always be a threat, but we can find ways to live in better harmony with the ecosystems that sustain us. The One Health movement in particular is something we think people should be paying attention to — it is a movement of scientists, health experts and more who believe, correctly, that the health of humans, animals and ecosystems are all interconnected.
We should be making political and economic decisions based on that reality, but so far we are doing just the opposite. Governments, companies, entities and individuals of all kinds still believe we can trash the planet and abuse wild and domestic animals without facing any consequences whatsoever. COVID-19 is proving them -- us -- wrong.
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