THE VACCINE FOR COVID-19 'WAS' UNDISTURBED NATURAL HABITAT: THE NEXT PANDEMIC MAY COME FROM THE AMAZON.
Today’s crisis is far from unexpected. For many years, scientists and epidemiologists were predicting and warning about the zoonotic threats – the transmission of pathogens from nonhuman animals to humans - that will lead to pandemics.
It therefore comes as no surprise, that the amount of pressure we put on Earth’s ecosystems can no longer be vaguely described as “unsustainable”. Our actions are dangerous to ALL life on the planet. This includes us. The recent COVID-19 pandemic was a loud and clear warning and possibly the last. We have no choice but to change our attitude and actions toward Nature.
This is not the problem of animals - this is our problem.
Humanity’s increased contact with wildlife through logging, mining, wild life trade, hunting, road building, wild animal consumption, including the concurrent destruction of the related biodiversity, has created the conditions for new viruses and diseases such as COVID-19 to arise with profound health and economic impacts for both rich and poor countries alike (3).
As David Quammen wrote: “We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbor so many species of animals and plants - and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses. 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.” (4).
In undisturbed habitats, viruses circulate in mild forms in most animals. A fascinating aspect of zoonotic diseases is that their animal hosts can remain healthy, posing little threat to our species when left alone (5). It is when the equilibrium is disturbed and they come into contact with humans, that some viruses cross the species barrier because of mutation, and human infections start taking place (6).
The main prerequisite to getting infected is not necessarily to eat the infected animal, or to have direct contact with its bodily fluids - like in wet markets, which are widely popular across Asia and Africa- it is as simple as being in the areas where forests are devastated. That is enough to be infected by the disease. Zoonotic diseases that emerge are linked to large-scale land-use changes like deforestation (7).
of new infectious diseases are zoonotic in nature, and the great majority of those infections (over 70%) originated in wildlife (1 and 2).
The majority of new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals.
About 75%
Deforestation causes animals to flee their natural habitats in search for food and shelter, and as consequence, they often come closer to humans.
The list of zoonotic diseases that have “accidentally” spilled-over to humans is both impressive and frightening.
Listed here are just SOME of them for you to ponder (9):
- Hendra (fatality rate: 57% - 70%)
- Ebola (fatality rate: around 50%)
- Nipah (fatality rate: 40% - 75%)
- Hantavirus (fatality rate: 36%)
- Anthrax (fatality rate: 20%-80%)
- West Nile Disease (fatality rate: 14%-35%)
- Chikungunya (fatality rate: around 9.5%)
- Scrub Typhus (fatality rate: 6%-70%)
- Kyasanar Forest Disease (fatality rate: 3%-10%)
- COVID-19 (fatality rate: around 1.4%, increases with age)
- Lassa (fatality rate: 1%-50%)
- Dengue (fatality rate: 1%-20%)
- Japanese encephalitis (fatality rate: 0.3%-60%)
- Lyme disease (risk of severe and long-lasting symptoms)
- HIV (life-long treatment; remained among 5 leading causes of death for specific age groups for females and in the black population)
Looking at the low to modest fatality rates of some of the diseases from the list, it seems that Nature has been kind to us with COVID-19 – the worldwide pandemic that we are currently going through. It has a relatively low death rate, though that fact will not soothe the aching hearts of those who already have lost, or will lose, their loved ones to the virus. Still, if we experience a zoonotic disease with the mortality rate of Ebola and the virulence of something like measles (highly transmissible; with a 90% transmission rate when exposed), we are talking about a very real world-wide catastrophe, which unfortunately is now likely to come from the Amazon.
The absurd and economically unjustified rate of Rainforest deforestation and destruction, which is fundamental driver of climate change, is also accompanied with a no less absurd scale of wild life trade, when animals are taken away from their natural habitats (10). Together, it is a recipe for a zoonotic disaster (11).
Thousands of hectares of the Amazon Rainforest are demolished yearly, while millions of animals are taken out from their natural habitat and stuffed in filthy cages to be sold locally, or worldwide, to become an exotic pet or menu item, a trophy, a piece of jewelry (earrings!) or other fashion accessory, as well as a common ingredient in a folk medicine. Brazil, which hosts 60% of the Amazon Rainforest, is already considered to be the world’s ‘hot spot’ of emerging infectious diseases, such as: Chikungunya, Dengue fever, Yellow fever, Zika, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, Leptospirosis, Leishmaniasis, and Chagas disease (12).
Ribeirinhos (a) from Amazonia know and warn new comers that: “If you go deeper than you should into the selva (jungle), you will get sick. It seems like the Forest is protecting itself.”
Just a curious and sad fact, according to Ailton Krenak, a human rights activist, indigenous Yanomami did not have malaria before the mid-1970’s (14). Further research into the topic demonstrated that malaria (together, with measles and flu) wiped out several indigenous communities after the construction of the Brazil-Venezuela border road (15). The spread of malaria was further exacerbated with the arrival of thousands of gold miners into the Yanomami territory.
Just imagine and consider the vast Amazon, the biggest tropical forest in the world with its massive and diverse fauna, which we still know almost nothing about. Did you know that each representative Amazonian fauna can be a potential host for a unique pathogen? Some are already known to science but some we have no idea that they even exist! We are talking about unknown viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites. All these pathogens were evolving together with their hosts in the Amazon Forest. They did not evolve with modern humans. Yet, they will start to evolve with humans once they have contact with us - for better or for worse. That contact, those new pathogens, our respectful reader already knows results from deforestation and consequential fauna abuse.
AS WE SEE WITH THE CASE OF COVID-19, SUCH INTERACTION
WITH NEW PATHOGENS IS POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS.
Let’s look at some selected examples of infectious diseases associated with habitat destruction
due to deforestation in the Amazon:
PARACOCCIDIOIDOMYCOSIS
Paracoccidioidomycosis (b) outbreaks have been reported in areas with massive deforestation, while related soil removal increases the exposure of people to related pathogenic spores causing further outbreaks.
MALARIA AND HANTAVIRUS
High prevalence of malaria and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (c) has been detected among gold miners in the Amazon region. Malaria transmission is associated with mining activity. This pathogenic association is especially evident among people working in illegal gold mines.
BAT ATTACKS
Increase in rabies outbreaks and bat attacks in animal or human population due to the presence of deforested areas, livestock, highways or mining.
MINING
Cutaneous leishmaniasis (d) incidences have increased in the human population often related to the presence of gold mining.
CHAGAS DISEASE
Presence of deforested areas increase the abundance and distribution of Chagas disease (e). (9)
a) River dwellers, usually a mix of native population, descendants or migrants from North East of Brazil.
b) Paracoccidioidomycosis, is an infection caused by the fungus, is a progressive mycosis of the lungs, skin, mucous membranes, lymph nodes, and internal organs. https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/paracoccidioidomycosis/
c) Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) is a severe, sometimes fatal, respiratory disease in humans caused by infection with hantaviruses. Anyone who comes into contact with rodents that carry hantaviruses is at risk of HPS https://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/hps/index.html.
d) Cutaneous leishmaniasis is a skin infection caused by a single-celled parasite that is transmitted by the bite of a phlebotomine sand fly. https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/leishmaniasis/health_professionals/index.html
e) Chagas disease is a potentially life-threatening illness caused by a protozoan parasite which has been transmitted to humans by contact with the feces or urine of triatomine bugs. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/chagas-disease-(american-trypanosomiasis).
It is important to remember that the now common human migration to and from environmentally degraded Amazon regions, together with already existing environmental imbalances due to climate change (where the deforestation of the Amazon and other tropical forests plays a pivotal role), makes it both easier and more common for outbreaks to occur in urban areas – located far away from the forest.
For example, Yellow fever virus,
an acute viral hemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes, had always been associated with the forest. It is endemic in the Brazilian Amazon Basin. (16)
It was initially believed that its transmission would be confined in low population areas. Still, here and there cases still emerged, but overall the spread was considered to be nothing of serious concern -until November 2016. After decades of silence, with the last urban case seen in 1942, yellow fever virus has now spread in Southeast and South of Brazil, reaching in less than one year four of the most populous Brazilian states: Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo. Between 1980 and 2016, Brazil registered 797 cases of yellow fever in remote Amazonian regions. Between 2017 and 2019 the number of cases was already 2,840 and they were registered in big urban areas (17).
Pic.1. Yellow fever virus spread: rapid dislocation into and between Brazilian biomes. Black dashed line: viral spread from late 1980’ until 2010; white solid line: viral spread from the first half of the 2010 decade onward, including the ongoing outbreak in the Southeast.
Sources: IBGE/MMA 2004 for map of Brazilian biomes. Brazilian Ministry of Health//SVS, YF reports from 1999-2018 for epidemiological information on epizootic waves and human cases (http://portalms.saude.gov.br/saude-de-a-z/febre-amarela-sintomas-transmissao-e-prevencao/situacao-epidemiologica-dados).
Higher temperatures due to climate change resulting from the deforestation of the Amazon (and other tropical forests), degradation of natural habitats together with reduction of wild animal population and consequent lack of blood source for mosquitos are among the main reasons of yellow fever proliferation (18).
According to the Brazilian Institute of Evandro Chagas, 220 types of arboviruses (viruses transmitted by mosquitos, ticks, or other arthropods) were isolated till now in the Amazon, 175 of them were isolated the first time in Brazil and 115 of them were completely new to science. Of those, 37 are associated with diseases in humans and 11 have the potential to become a pandemic (19). At the same time, Professor Pedro Vasconcelos, President of Brazilian Society of Tropical Medicine affirms that
“we don’t even know 2% of viruses in Brazil and despite COVID-19, we still have other diseases that do not stop” “We know the cause is devastation [of natural habitats]” (20 and 21).
All this time, while we wash our hands, wear masks, set in place relief funds to aid hundreds of millions to recover from imminent poverty and support our health system from collapsing as a consequence of COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of hectares of Rainforest are continuing to be unnecessarily demolished while millions of wild animals are both killed and taken away from their habitat…their home.
Of course, investing in health research and finding ways to treat the emerging infectious diseases is utterly important, but we, at Maathru as well as others, are certain, that without putting serious collective efforts into eradicating the root causes of zoonotic diseases ‘spillover’, the work of many great health professionals can be considered as just an ‘expensive ‘band-aid’ that needs frequent changing because today’s new vaccine will not work against tomorrow’s new virus’. (22 and 23).
An old indigenous Amazonian proverb says: “For every disease there is a plant that cures it”. While we continue to devastate forests, expose wild life to unnecessary cruelty and suffering, we also call for more deadly pandemics to fall on our heads. Unfortunately, we are also annihilating the very possibility of finding novel and lifesaving medicines at the same time.
Without being able to connect our pernicious acts with the seriousness of their consequences, we will end up as a civilization on our knees on the edge of non-existence. And next time, a miniscule unseen organism might wipe us out. Our penance, our final price, for being a self-obsessed specie that thought it acceptable to sacrifice its own environment, to sacrifice all of Nature, while it rushed blindly to satisfy its insatiable greed…its thirst for all that is Nature, which as yet we still do not fully-understand.
Sources Used and Works Cited:
1) www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/zoonotic-diseases.html
2) www.nature.com/articles/nature06536/
3) https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06536
4) www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/opinion/coronavirus-china.html
and
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584488/#:~:text=Reporting%20from%20the%20epicenters%20of,Mr.
5)www.lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/coronavirus-and-conservation/
and
7) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK215318/
and
www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Deforestation/deforestation_update3.php
8) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK114486/
9) www.who.int/zoonoses/diseases/en/
10) www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2430
11) www.scielo.br/pdf/aabc/v92n1/0001-3765-aabc-92-01-e20191375.pdf
12) www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00923-8
and
14) www.coha.org/the-yanomami-malaria-genocide-and-policy-prospects/
16) www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/yellow-fever-virus-current-epidemic-brazil-originated-amazon-1980
18) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6135548/
19) https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0001-37652019000600701&script=sci_arttext
20) http://www.abc.org.br/2020/04/16/biodiversidade-e-chave-para-prever-e-evitar-novas-pandemias/
21) https://www.iec.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/02fevereiro2020_o_globo_online-6.pdf
22) https://endpandemics.earth/index.html#header5-1
23) https://www.facebook.com/Maathru/
July 5, 2020.
Viktoria Miranovich & Erick Miller, (Ed.).