Coronaviruses are not a new phenomenon, nor were they discovered only\n recently. They were first studied in detail by scientists in the 1960s.\n The name comes from the \u2018corona\u2019 or \u2018crown\u2019 of sugary proteins that \nprotrude from the envelope of the virus. Coronaviruses exist in numerous\n varieties and infect birds and mammals, including bats, pigs, cats, and\n humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coronavirus responsible for the current epidemic, now labeled \nCOVID-19, is the third to cause a major epidemic in the last two \ndecades.[1] The first, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), emerged\n in southern China in 2002. Less well known is Middle East Respiratory \nSyndrome (MERS), first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Each of these \nsyndromes spread to two or three dozen other countries, both in the \nregion of origin and further afield. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These three coronaviruses belong to the much wider category of \nzoonoses \u2013 diseases that jump from non-human animals to humans. There \nare numerous zoonoses, however, and most are caused not bycoronaviruses\n but by other viruses or by bacteria or parasites. They were the source \nof the Black Death that killed between a third and a half of the \npopulation of Europe in the fourteenth century, the bubonic plague that \nbegan in 1894, the \u2018Spanish\u2019 or \u2018Russian\u2019 influenza that spread in the \nwake of World War One, and the so-called \u2018swine flu\u2019 of 2009.[2] Here \nare a few more zoonoses and species that transmit them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So many species may transmit diseases to humans, including mammals, \nbirds, and insects. Scientists seem to agree, however, that the \u2018natural\n reservoir\u2019 of all three of the coronaviruses that have caused the major\n recent epidemics (SARS, MERS, COVID-19) is bats<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the many species of bats, those belonging to the family known as \n\u2018horseshoe bats\u2019 carry coronaviruses genetically closest to COVID-19.[3]\n The species of horseshoe bat extant in China is the Chinese rufous \nhorseshoe bat, which is widely distributed and not protected by law. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The coronavirus may be transmitted from bats to humans directly or \nthrough an intermediate species. The intermediate species for SARS was \nthe civet cat, for MERS the camel. Shen Yongyi and Xiao Lihua of South \nChina Agricultural University in Guangzhou suggest that the intermediate\n species for COVID-19 is the pangolin \u2013 a long-snouted scaly anteater \nwhose parts are used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat skin \nailments, menstrual disorders, and arthritis.[4] They found that genetic\n sequences of viruses isolated from pangolins are 99% similar to \nCOVID-19. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I myself doubt whether the pangolin was the intermediate species. \nMany of the people first infected with COVID-19 worked at an open-air \nmarket in Wuhan where seafood and animals captured in the wild or their \nparts were sold. Pangolins were not officially listed as being on sale \nthere. That is not surprising: pangolins are a protected species and \nselling them is punishable with a prison term of ten years or longer. \nIllegal trafficking may nonetheless be widespread, but surely it is \nconducted clandestinely, not in full public view.[5] Direct transmission\n from bats seems more likely. Bat meat was openly sold at the market \n(apparently it tastes rather like mutton, but has a texture similar to \nchicken). It is also possible that some other intermediate species was \ninvolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does this mean that consumption of wild animals is dangerous enough \nto justify its suppression, as many argue (both in and outside China)? \nThis conclusion seems at odds with age-old experience. After all, early \nhumans fed themselves partly by hunting wild game for hundreds of \nthousands of years. Only in the last couple of centuries have most of us\n stopped using this source of food. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, consumption of wild animals really is dangerous under \ncertain conditions \u2013 namely, when the animals come from areas only \nrecently penetrated and exploited by humans and therefore bring with \nthem diseases to which we have not had a chance to develop immunity. \nThis is explained by Greg Gerritt of the Rhode Island Green Party.[6] <\/p>\n\n\n\n There have been a number of \nrelatively recent disease outbreaks with novel diseases, diseases that \nwestern science had not seen before, and often diseases that the \ncommunities where the outbreaks originate had not experienced \nbefore. Most of these diseases are also originally transmitted to people\n from tropical wild animal populations, with bats and primates \nimplicated in some of them. What is happening is that the deforestation \nprocess works in a variety of ways, driven by factors like new road \nconstruction and the development of plantations. As roads reach new \nareas, they increase both the cutting of trees and the shooting of \nwildlife for food. Some of the wildlife is eaten locally and replaces \nfood sources lost as deforestation progresses; some of the hunting takes\n advantage of the new roads and transports the food to urban markets \nwhere there is often a high demand for bushmeat. With the hunting taking\n place in places where very few people have hunted previously that are \nnow available for exploitation due to new roads, or places where hunters\n are no longer living isolated communities, hunters are running into \nnovel diseases in the same way that a survey of biodiversity in places \nthat have not been explored and exploited before finds new species of \ngeckos, salamanders, and monkeys. It you are finding new species of \nanimals and plants, then you are running into new microorganisms: some \nwill eventually be used to cure diseases, others will cause new \ndiseases, and most will have little direct effect on humans. <\/p> The\n climate link is that the protection and maintenance of good health in \nthe global forest, and especially tropical forests, is a critical part \nof our strategy to prevent the worst effects of climate change. We have \nto move towards zero carbon emissions rather quickly, but we also have \nto suck carbon dioxide out of the sky. Trees and soils are the most \nnatural and least energy-intensive ways to do that. The best way to keep\n the trees and soils healthy is to protect tropical forests. We are \nalready seeing reports of the carbon budget of the tropical forests \nturning negative. Deforestation is the big driver, but a decent amount \nof the loss of carbon in tropical forests is a cascade effect. As forest\n turn silent, as the animals are all hunted out even if it is prior to \ndeforestation, the forest unravels. No animals are eating seeds that \nneed to go through digestive systems to germinate. No animals are \ndepositing seeds in their poop as they move from place to place. Very \nsmall pests run amok with predators gone. The ability of the forest to \nsequester and store carbon falls apart, requiring ever greater efforts \nto decarbonize and new ways to sequester carbon dioxide already in the \natmosphere. <\/p> The conclusion is that the process that brings the \nnew diseases to humans, deforestation, and the bushmeat trade are part \nand parcel of the climate crisis, and to better prevent future novel \ndiseases, we need to do a lot better job of protecting the forests that \nhelp keep the climate intact.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n That is all well and good. But this immediately raises further \nquestions. Who is endangering the forests? For what purpose? How can the\n process be stopped? These questions are tackled in another article on this website<\/a>, where I write: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider the fires now burning \nthrough the forests that serve as our planet\u2019s lungs \u2013 in Amazonia but \nalso in other parts of Brazil and in Indonesia. These are not \n\u2018wildfires\u2019: there is good reason to suppose that they are set \ndeliberately in order to clear the land for commercial activities. In \nAmazonia arson opens up land for the cultivation of soybeans, for cattle\n ranching, in certain places for mining. In the tourist area around \nPinheira in southern Brazil a state park has been set aflame with a view\n to residential development on what is viewed as prime real estate. In \nIndonesia most forest fires are set in order to clear land for palm oil \nplantations. So capitalists in at least five distinct non-energy fields \nof profit-making enterprise are involved in laying waste these precious \nforests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n If we are to stop the wanton destruction of our forests and the \nperiodic epidemics associated with this process, we must stop production\n for profit and the endless expansion of capital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n [1] There are another four coronaviruses that cause the common cold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [2] \u2018Swine flu\u2019 is a misleading term, inasmuch as the virus seems to\n be equally at home in pigs, birds, and humans. The outbreak was \nattributed to unsafe and crowded conditions at a pig \u2018factory\u2019 in \nMexico. See my article here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [3] According to Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, UK. Source here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n