Thankfully, people have started pointing fingers at factory farms and meat-eating as the source past, current and future pandemics.
Osama Bin Laden was the cause for 9-11 and now, factory farms, meat consumption and most importantly people who support this unwarranted suffering are the cause for Coronavirus (and future pandemics).
Kate Brown has a thoughtful piece:
Microbial webs have bridged the spaces between human beings and other species for all of our history. Long before anyone knew what a single-cell organism was, cultural practices maximized the exchange of microbes: as people farmed, foraged, tended livestock, fermented their food, dipped their hands in common bowls, and greeted one other with a touch, they engaged in rituals that bound them together with their neighbors and other organisms. This was probably not accidental. A wealth of evidence shows that, when we share microbes with other people and organisms, we become healthier, better adapted to our environments, and more in synch as a social unit.
The interconnectedness of our biological lives, which has become even clearer in recent decades, is pushing us to reconsider our understanding of the natural world. It turns out that the familiar Linnaean taxonomy, with each species on its own distinct branch of the tree, is too unsubtle: lichens, for example, are made up of a fungus and an alga so tightly bound that the two species create a new organism that is difficult to classify. Biologists have begun questioning the idea that each tree is an “individual”—it might be more accurately understood as a node in a network of underworld exchanges between fungi, roots, bacteria, lichen, insects, and other plants. The network is so intricate that it’s difficult to say where one organism ends and the other begins. Our picture of the human body is shifting, too. It seems less like a self-contained vessel, defined by one’s genetic code and ruled by a brain, than like a microbial ecosystem that sweeps along in atmospheric currents, harvesting gases, bacteria, phages, fungal spores, and airborne toxins in its nets.
In the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, this idea of a body as an assembly of species—a community—seems newly relevant and unsettling. How are we supposed to protect ourselves, if we are so porous? Are pandemics inevitable, when living things are bound so tightly together in a dense, planetary sphere?
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In piecing together the origin story of the coronavirus pandemic, many narratives have pointed to Chinese “wet markets,” at which live animals are sold. But no matter where the viral “spillover” occurred, it was made more likely by widespread trends. The single best predictor of where new diseases will spring up is population density. The misnamed Spanish flu of 1918 most likely emerged on Kansas farms, where people, animals, and birds lived in close quarters. One study found that, from 1940 to 2004, infectious diseases materialized most in densely packed areas, such as the northeastern United States, Western Europe, Japan, and southeastern Australia.
Osama Bin Laden was the cause for 9-11 and now, factory farms, meat consumption and most importantly people who support this unwarranted suffering are the cause for Coronavirus (and future pandemics).
Kate Brown has a thoughtful piece:
Microbial webs have bridged the spaces between human beings and other species for all of our history. Long before anyone knew what a single-cell organism was, cultural practices maximized the exchange of microbes: as people farmed, foraged, tended livestock, fermented their food, dipped their hands in common bowls, and greeted one other with a touch, they engaged in rituals that bound them together with their neighbors and other organisms. This was probably not accidental. A wealth of evidence shows that, when we share microbes with other people and organisms, we become healthier, better adapted to our environments, and more in synch as a social unit.
The interconnectedness of our biological lives, which has become even clearer in recent decades, is pushing us to reconsider our understanding of the natural world. It turns out that the familiar Linnaean taxonomy, with each species on its own distinct branch of the tree, is too unsubtle: lichens, for example, are made up of a fungus and an alga so tightly bound that the two species create a new organism that is difficult to classify. Biologists have begun questioning the idea that each tree is an “individual”—it might be more accurately understood as a node in a network of underworld exchanges between fungi, roots, bacteria, lichen, insects, and other plants. The network is so intricate that it’s difficult to say where one organism ends and the other begins. Our picture of the human body is shifting, too. It seems less like a self-contained vessel, defined by one’s genetic code and ruled by a brain, than like a microbial ecosystem that sweeps along in atmospheric currents, harvesting gases, bacteria, phages, fungal spores, and airborne toxins in its nets.
In the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, this idea of a body as an assembly of species—a community—seems newly relevant and unsettling. How are we supposed to protect ourselves, if we are so porous? Are pandemics inevitable, when living things are bound so tightly together in a dense, planetary sphere?
[---]
In piecing together the origin story of the coronavirus pandemic, many narratives have pointed to Chinese “wet markets,” at which live animals are sold. But no matter where the viral “spillover” occurred, it was made more likely by widespread trends. The single best predictor of where new diseases will spring up is population density. The misnamed Spanish flu of 1918 most likely emerged on Kansas farms, where people, animals, and birds lived in close quarters. One study found that, from 1940 to 2004, infectious diseases materialized most in densely packed areas, such as the northeastern United States, Western Europe, Japan, and southeastern Australia.
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