General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'Tip of the iceberg': is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/tip-of-the-iceberg-is-our-destruction-of-nature-responsible-for-covid-19-aoe?fbclid=IwAR31u5c5C6fJJcFmuDHcK_sulQfs2sXzVtKDpTTYNwygzTFCwWXmth0eX1o<snip>
Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. The 150 or so people who live in the village, which sits on the south bank of the Ivindo River, deep in the great Minkebe Forest in northern Gabon, are used to occasional bouts of diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever and sleeping sickness. Mostly they shrug them off.
But in January 1996, Ebola, a deadly virus then barely known to humans, unexpectedly spilled out of the forest in a wave of small epidemics. The disease killed 21 of 37 villagers who were reported to have been infected, including a number who had carried, skinned, chopped or eaten a chimpanzee from the nearby forest.
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. We used to love the forest, now we fear it, he told me. Many of Bematsicks 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.
Is it possible, then, that it was human activity, such as road building, mining, hunting and logging, that triggered the Ebola epidemics in Mayibout 2 and elsewhere in the 1990s and that is unleashing new terrors today?
We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbour so many species of animals and plants and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses, David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic, recently wrote in the New York Times. We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.
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interesting read
CrispyQ
(36,482 posts)It will get worse as we continue to encroach on the habitat of other species. We see what happens when other species overpopulate but we seem unable to extrapolate that to ourselves.
SIX BILLION MIRACLES IS ENOUGH
I bought that bumper sticker at the turn of the century.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Im 62...I knew when I was just a kid that overpopulation and corporations would become very dangerous in the future. I didnt know how, I just knew something bad was coming if people keep birthing baby after baby after baby.
Too much of a good thing is right! Approaching 8 billion now.
malaise
(269,068 posts)We humans are just a part of nature and some declared that they have dominion over all things. We are now learning the hard way - sadly even those of us who believe we are merely part of the planet's life will suffer.
In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)marble falls
(57,114 posts)JCMach1
(27,559 posts)In the Middle Ages...
Coronavirus simply don't give AF about your Gaia theory...
Sometimes it is just really difficult to accept the stone cold randomness of the universe.