Coronavirus COVID-19 and Zoonotic Diseases: A Perspective

What if I were to tell you that there is a very real chance you will get infected by the Coronavirus? Prof. Gabriel Leung, the chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, has predicted that 60% of the world population stands a chance to get infected with the Coronavirus. If we consider 1-2% fatality, the fatality count runs into millions.

Earlier, it was widely assumed that this novel virus could be lethal for the elderly and those with a compromised immune system. However now, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesu has confirmed that even young people are not “invincible.”

Italy decries that “a generation has died” with their elderly succumbing to the virus and Ghebreyesu’s warning to the young definitely adds to the stress.  

As I am writing this essay, the virus has spread to 189 countries, which is practically every single country on earth – small and big – in a matter of few weeks. Over 337,881 people have tested positive and over 14,444 have succumbed to it already.

Additionally, here’s the worst news – virus such as these attack in waves. That is to say, the world’s shutdown could last well over 18 months.

I want you to pause here and give it a thought – 18 months.

What next?

Therefore, the question on everyone’s mind is – how long can you shut down a city? How long can schools be closed for? How long can you stop people from going out? The moment you lift the restrictions, there is every likelihood that the Virus will come right back and right again at you until it is quelled for good, which according to some estimates might take months, if not years.

The travel, aviation, hospitality, manufacturing, petrochemicals, services industries have taken a big hit, and the overall stock market continues to plummet.

In other words, are we headed for the biggest recession the world has seen?

Will we have a job?

These are the real questions the world is facing today and we don’t have an answer, and not likely to have answers anytime soon. Only time will tell how the situation unfolds.

While we can’t explain the unknown, we will try to explain what we know for certain. How did it all start? After that, we will explore what we could do now and in the future, to avoid a repeat of such an outbreak.

Let’s first understand – what is Coronavirus?

Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). These are called coronaviruses because their molecular structure resembles a circle with spikes. The word “corona” is Latin for crown. The current Coronavirus outbreak known as COVID-19 is a new strain that originated in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, as we all know by now. This strain has not been previously identified in humans.

sss

Coronaviruses and zoonotic diseases

Coronavirus and zoonotic diseases – what is the connection? Zoonotic diseases are those that are transmitted from animals to humans. The SARS-CoV was transmitted from civet cats to humans while MERS-CoV was transmitted from camels to humans.

Similarly, several known coronaviruses are circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans, but they might in the future. 

This table as of January 2020 represents some of most well-known coronaviruses the world has seen recently. The point to note is that all of them have originated from animals.

sss

Why outbreaks of zoonotic diseases occur

Now that we have enough experiential evidence of the fallout of the current Coronavirus and zoonotic diseases in general on the world; let’s explore the underlying link between animal consumption and their outbreaks.

Humankind’s increasing demand for animal meat has steered the world into a very dark place. But it is even darker a world for the countless chickens, cows, pigs, goats, sheep, marine animals, practically every animal on earth that is caught and consumed by humans as “food.”

These animals are kept in deplorable conditions, where they struggle to stand, let alone move. Chickens and smaller animals particularly, are crammed in small cages, where they are made to stand in their own faecal matter and slaughtered in full view of each other. At slaughter, the blood, bile, urine, and other bodily fluids inevitably mix. This concoction is undoubtedly a breeding ground for pathogens, bacteria, and viruses.

It is a deadly mix.

Since COVID-19 originated at a wet animal market in Wuhan, China, not surpassingly, COVID-19 is strikingly similar to SARS and MERS in symptoms, and in the way it found its way from animals to humans. H1N1 or Swine Flu as it was popularly known, unleased its terror in India a decade ago. As the name suggests, the disease found its way from pigs to humans.

Time and time again we keep hearing of the onset of avian flu in chicken farms that results in the merciless culling of millions of chickens. Look at this video where thousands of chickens were buried alive in Karnataka after the COVID-19 scare.

The antibiotics bane

Animals raised for “food” are kept on a regular dose of antibiotics, which enables them to stay alive in cramped spaces.

In fact, factory-farmed animals consume more antibiotics than humans do. The drugs used to grow these animals big and to keep them alive make humans very very sick.

How?

The high doses of antibiotics in the systems of animals raised for eating leads to microbial-resistant bacteria. In other words, bacteria becomes resistant to antibiotics as a result of overuse.

Therefore, this means it gets difficult or impossible to treat humans with bacterial infections, and viruses such as the coronaviruses, cause havoc when they strike.

According to the WHO, “Antibiotic resistance is rising to dangerously high levels in all parts of the world,” where “misuse” of antibiotics in animals is accelerating the process.

More examples of zoonotic diseases

About 60 percent of all human diseases and 75 percent of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, according to researchers. Hence, most human infections come from livestock, including pigs, chickens, cattle, goats, sheep, and camels. 

The 1918 flu called the Spanish Flu, which infected over a quarter of the world’s population killing 50 million, included more than 10  million deaths in India, making it the worst hit country. It was caused by an H1N1 virus that historians say likely originated in a Kansas chicken farm in USA.

An H1N1 strain that reached pandemic levels in the United States and Mexico in 2009 likely had its origins in the pig populations of both countries.

Ebola and HIV, which transferred to humans from primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas, were discovered in Africa where communities live near primate-dense populations.

Wet markets are places where people buy a variety of live animals for consumption. Many different species are captured and stacked on top of one another in environments conducive to cross-species disease transfer.

This is widely known to be the cause of the current pandemic – the Coronavirus disease COVID-19.

China is not the only place where wet markets exist, they are prevalent throughout south eastern Asia. They continue to be the breeding ground for new strains of bacteria.

What is the solution?

According to scientists, three out of four emerging diseases in humans come from animals and yet the world has not taken the fundamental step of eliminating animal-derived food. Every time we purchase an animal product, we are creating a ground for potentially unleashing the fury of the next zoonotic disease to infect us.

The question that needs to be asked today is – when plants are capable of providing humans all the nutrition we need, why do we kill animals for food and invent more methods of killing more of them in industrial proportions?

Is eating bat soup or meat burgers really worth such pandemics? Isn’t it time we stopped this carnage?

Today, while the emergency fight against the Coronavirus disease COVID-19 is on through social distancing, quarantining, and so on, the immediate long term fight is really against our mind set – a mind set where eating animals is “normal.”

Now that we know what the COVID-19 Coronavirus and zoonotic diseases in general that have occurred in the past can unleash, our healthy survival depends on our next decision, can we afford to delay it further?

How veganism can provide solution against zoonotic diseases

Above all, a vegan diet is good for human health as much as it is for animal welfare and in general, the planet. All our dietary needs, even as infants and children, are best supplied by an animal-free diet.

A vegan diet reduces the risk of many chronic degenerative diseases and conditions that includes heart disease, cancer, obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.

It goes without saying that as more and more people embrace veganism, animal agriculture will show sharp declines, wet markets and factory farms will shut down, thereby significantly decreasing the chances of future outbreaks of zoonotic diseases.

Importantly, plant-based foods bolster the immune system when one takes a healthy balance of vitamins and minerals. Vegetables are a natural source of vitamins. When it comes to immune health, we need to incorporate vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants as explained by the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).

Each of these vitamins is prevalent in certain plant-based foods. Vitamin C, E, and A are all powerful antioxidants that strengthen our body’s ability to fight off infection. Minerals such as Iron, Zinc, Selenium are abundant in nut and seeds. Combined with sunlight and B12 supplementation, we give everything to our bodies to ward off infections such as the Coronavirus disease COVID-19.

Conclusion

We’d like to close this essay by leaving you with a couple of videos. One is by Earthling Ed Winters, who provides critical insights about the current Coronavirus and zoonotic diseases, in general, and leaves us with thoughts to ponder on. It is aptly titled: Coronavirus is just the start. Something far worse is coming.

The second is a yet another insightful explanation by Dr. Neal Barnard, PCRM about how and where viruses originate titled, Where Many Viruses Originate. We can see clear pathways for how threats like the current Coronavirus and zoonotic diseases have originated.

ttt

ZZZ

Finally, I want to say that there are all sorts of communication materials doing the rounds in these trying times. It is upto each one of us what to accept and what to believe in, in order to fight the current Coronavirus and zoonotic diseases, overall. What we choose to accept, believe, and abide by will determine the future of this planet.

Cover: Photo by cottonbro from Pexels