The current crisis is an unprecedented wake-up call. What is your worst nightmare? A brand new virus that’s; respiratory transmitted that has a high degree of transmissibility that has a higher degree of morbidity and mortality.
Cova 19 has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world, but this coronavirus is not the only infectious disease that has emerged in recent years. There’s, been a bola MERS SARS flus that originated in birds and pigs.
West Nile virus and Zika virus, we are beginning to understand that the more we put pressure on nature, the more that is them impacting us. I think it’s. Pretty clear nature is trying to tell us something here and frankly, it’s been knocking on our door.
I talked to some experts that say if we continue to destroy the environment. Future pandemics like these could become more likely and may explain why kovat 19 has killed so many [ Music ]. How likely are we to see infectious diseases spread as a result of climate change? The bottom line is that we’ve, already seen the effects of climate change on infectious diseases.
We see evidence already. The climate change is pushing certain infections to go to new places. We’ve, seen wildlife, which have probably been forced to congregate in ways in part because of they & # 39, ve lost their traditional habitats and in part because it’s, getting warmer opportunity towards the Arctic.
The more contact species that are normally separate have the greater likelihood that disease could spread. This is especially true because 70 % of the world’s. Infectious diseases originate in wildlife.
It turns out that the largest cause of this habitat loss worldwide is deforestation. Deforestation usually happens to clear land for agricultural purposes like farms and raising livestock. There are increasingly large concentrated livestock operations around the world, some of which have been sources of emerging infections.
We see in the instance of, for example, SARS, which was a corona virus that have to moved from bats into livestock into people. One reason why respiratory infections, like kovat 19, are so deadly is air pollution.
Recent research from Harvard suggests that coronavirus patients who live in cities with higher levels of air pollution may be a significantly higher risk of death from the disease. Dense areas like New York, City and Milan were especially hard-hit.
Air pollution is, we know, a significant risk for developing pneumonia, particularly in children. Your likelihood of having a heart attack your life good of having diabetes. These are all influenced by air pollution.
There’s, also a whole lot of pollution, especially we see this here in the Los Angeles basin from cars and trucks. The transportation sectors is now the largest source of greenhouse gases in California, in the United States.
For the last three years, air pollution has gotten worse for the first time in decades, urbanization also increases the risk that infectious diseases like Cova 19, will spread rapidly. In 2009, the UN estimated that half of the world’s.
Population lived in urban areas. The greatest in human history, higher population density, increases the risk of any communicable disease, because people are in greater contact with each other in smaller space, and then there’s.
Air travel, which makes it easier for outbreaks to spread studies, show that the corona virus was brought to New York by international visitors from Europe. In the early days of the outbreak, only passengers from China were screened upon entry.
In turn, New York travelers sparked infections. Around the country, so that’s, the bad news, clearing forests, air pollution, urbanization, all these things help set up the stage for pandemics. But what can we do to prevent them? We must act decisively to protect our planet from both the corona virus and the existential threat of climate disruption.
The good news is that the solutions for climate change are also pandemic solutions. The main thing that has been effective thus far in reducing emissions and air pollution has been transitioning from fossil fuels to generate electricity to cleaner sources of energy, mainly solar and wind power.
If we had a good reason to invest in clean energy and climate solutions before we have a an even greater reason, now is the economy in the shape that it’s in and the potential benefits that that would bring, as we essentially knock off Pieces of the tapestry of life on Earth.
We can expect surprises from the pathogens, because most of the drivers in some ways are more also. Drivers of infectious disease risk.
Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q53RnXk-2OI
