The Guardian: ‘Tip of The Iceberg’ – Is Our Destruction of Nature Responsible For COVID-19?

The author travelled to Mayibout 2 in 2004 to investigate why deadly diseases new to humans were emerging from biodiversity “hotspots” such as tropical rainforests and bushmeat markets in African and Asian cities.

Mayibout 2 “sits on the south bank of the Ivindo River, deep in the great Minkebe Forest in northern Gabon; located at the Equator in West-Central Africa, bordered by Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, and the Republic of the Congo.

Kate Jones wrote: “It took a day by canoe and then many hours along degraded forest logging roads, passing Baka villages and a small goldmine, to reach the village.

“There, I found traumatised people still fearful that the deadly virus, which kills up to 90% of the people it infects, would return.

“Villagers told me how children had gone into the forest with dogs that had killed the chimp.

“They said that everyone who cooked or ate it got a terrible fever within a few hours. Some died immediately, while others were taken down the river to hospital.”

A few, like Nesto Bematsick, recovered – many of his family members died”.

“Only a decade or two ago it was widely thought that tropical forests and intact natural environments teeming with exotic wildlife threatened humans by harbouring the viruses and pathogens that lead to new diseases in humans such as Ebola, HIV and dengue.

“But a number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases such as COVID-19, the viral disease that emerged in China in December 2019, to arise – with profound health and economic impacts in rich and poor countries alike.

Increasing threat

Research suggests “that outbreaks of animal-borne and other infectious diseases such as Ebola, Sars, bird flu and now COVID-19, caused by a novel coronavirus, are on the rise”.

“Pathogens are crossing from animals to humans, and many are able to spread quickly to new places.

“The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that three-quarters of new or emerging diseases that infect humans originate in animals.

“Some, like rabies and plague, crossed from animals centuries ago…A few, like COVID-19, which emerged last year in Wuhan, China, and Mers, which is linked to camels in the Middle East, are new to humans and spreading globally.

“Other diseases that have crossed into humans include Lassa fever, which was first identified in 1969 in Nigeria, Nipah from Malaysia; and Sars from China, which killed more than 700 people and travelled to 30 countries in 2002-03.

“Some, like Zika and West Nile virus, which emerged in Africa, have mutated and become established in other continents.

Amplification effect

In 2008, Jones and a team of researchers identified 335 diseases that emerged between 1960 and 2004. At least 60% of which came from animals.

Increasingly, Jones says these “diseases are linked to environmental change and human behaviour”, through things like “the disruption of pristine forests driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, rapid urbanisation and population growth”.

“There are countless pathogens out there continuing to evolve which at some point could pose a threat to humans,” says Eric Fevre, chair of veterinary infectious diseases at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Infection and Global Health.

“The risk (of pathogens jumping from animals to humans) has always been there.”

But the difference between now and a few decades ago, is that “diseases are likely to spring up in both urban and natural environments”.

“We have created densely packed populations where alongside us are bats and rodents and birds, pets and other living things. That creates intense interaction and opportunities for things to move from species to species.”

Tip of the iceberg

The bad news, is “pathogens do not respect species boundaries”, according to Thomas Gillespie, a Disease Ecologist.

An Associate professor in Emory University’s Department of Environmental Sciences, studies how shrinking natural habitats and changing behaviour add to the risk of diseases spilling over from animals to humans.

“I am not at all surprised about the coronavirus outbreak,” he says. “The majority of pathogens are still to be discovered. We are at the very tip of the iceberg,” he said.

“Humans, says Gillespie, are creating the conditions for the spread of diseases by reducing the natural barriers between host animals – in which the virus is naturally circulating – and themselves,” the report said.

“We fully expect the arrival of pandemic influenza; we can expect large-scale human mortalities; we can expect other pathogens with other impacts.

“A disease like Ebola is not easily spread. But something with a mortality rate of Ebola spread by something like measles would be catastrophic.”

Wildlife everywhere is being put under more stress.

“Major landscape changes are causing animals to lose habitats, which means species become crowded together and also come into greater contact with humans. Species that survive change are now moving and mixing with different animals and with humans.”

But Disease Ecologists argue that viruses and other pathogens are also “likely to move from animals to humans in the many informal markets that have sprung up to provide fresh meat to fast-growing urban populations around the world”.

“Here, animals are slaughtered, cut up and sold on the spot,” the report said.

“The ‘wet market’ (one that sells fresh produce and meat) in Wuhan, thought by the Chinese government to be the starting point of the current COVID-19 pandemic, was known to sell numerous wild animals, “including live wolf pups, salamanders, crocodiles, scorpions, rats, squirrels, foxes, civets and turtles”.