#zoonotic

Rusty Meadows - Redraw! Original 2021 art:

[ID: Six pixel hearts of various special interest flags in order being Rabies, Virology, Zoonotic, QSMP, DSMP, and Cat Genetics. End ID]

@gender-darling top row

Zoonotic pathogens in bonobos and the implications of One Health

Researchers report PCR screening for potentially zoonotic pathogens detected in fecal samples from wild and semi-captive bonobos. This has raised some interesting questions for One Health and wildlife conservation. Anouk Gouvras March 26, 2021 A bonobo at the sanctuary of Lola Ya Bonobo in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photo credit Christina Bergey (Creative Commons…

“Be on guard, so that your hearts do not become heavy with the eating of flesh and with the intoxication of wine and with the anxiety of the world, and that day come upon you suddenly; for as a snare it will come upon all who dwell upon the surface of the earth.” (Jesus, Luke 21:34, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe — Old Syriac-Aramaic Manuscript of the New Testament Gospels)

Answer (my reply): It certainly does fit a tragic pattern. Not that Covid 19 is the only example of a zoonotic apocalypse, just the latest in a long series of pandemics and killer flu seasons or bird flues leading to much self-inflicted human suffering due to a diet that includes eating meat. The 1918 pandemic called the Spanish Flu was an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. There is now discussion about a future zoonotic pandemic that could be far worse, even more deadly than the current one. And this is part of a long sad history of diseases being passed from animals to humans. Wet markets and factory farms are the perfect setting for deadly diseases to transmit from species to species to human. The consequences of the eating of flesh leading to anxiety and pestilence goes back many centuries, and may ultimately bring civilization to an end one day soon… unless we collectively change our ways. #GoVegan

More than 100 years ago, a deadly flu virus circled the globe. It caused the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. Before it was over, this disease had sickened an estimated 500 million people. That was one-third of everyone alive at that time. Some 20 million to 50 million people died.

Flash forward to the 1970s. People in a small Central Africa village fell ill with a mystery disease. It caused bleeding that would not stop. Soon, this Ebola virus would spread to other villages.

Explainer: What is a coronavirus?

What do these famous viral outbreaks have in common with the new coronavirus disease known as COVID-19? Scientists believe animals initially carried the viruses that cause all three. Such diseases are known as zoonoses (ZOH-wuh-NO-sees). That means they started in animals and later spread to people.

Flu likely came from birds. Researchers think that bats may have been the source of the Ebola virus and of COVID-19. “Roughly 75 percent of global pandemics and disease outbreaks caused by new viruses come from wild animals,” says Tracey Goldstein. She’s a virus detective at the University of California, Davis. She hunts for new viruses among the wild animals of Africa.

When viruses pass from wildlife to people, it’s called a spillover. Fortunately, spillovers that affect more than a handful of people are rare. But big spillovers do seem to be happening more often, Goldstein and others observe.

NIH Director’s blog: Genomic Study Points to Natural Origin of COVID-19 [3/26/20]