Exclusive and gripping tale of scientist’s virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves, starting in aftermath of SARS. Since her lab got first patient samples on 30 Dec, she’s been fighting a battle in her worse nightmare, unaware what she was up against @sciam scientificamerican.com/article/how-ch…
1. “The SARS outbreak was a game-changer,” says Linfa Wang @dukenus, whose work got a swift mention in 2011 film Contagion. It was the first time a deadly coronavirus with pandemic potential emerged, helping jumpstart a global search for animal viruses that could infects humans.
2. With human populations encroaching on wildlife habitats, with major changes in land use, with wildlife & livestock transported across countries and their products around the world, and with a sharp increase in domestic and international travel, new outbreaks are inevitable.
3. Is a ban on eating & trading wildlife the solution?
@PeterDaszak @EcoHealthNYC worries that without efforts to change people’s traditional beliefs or provide alternative livelihoods, a blanket ban may push the industry underground, making disease detection more challenging.
@PeterDaszak @EcoHealthNYC worries that without efforts to change people’s traditional beliefs or provide alternative livelihoods, a blanket ban may push the industry underground, making disease detection more challenging.
4. Eating and trading wildlife is only part of the problem. In 2016, a new coronavirus caused an outbreak in pigs and killed 25,000 animals. There are concerns such viruses could easily jump to humans because their immune systems are very similar, says Gregory Gray
@DukeGHI.
@DukeGHI.
5. Although the current outbreak is the 6th one caused by bat-borne viruses in the past 26 years, “the animals are not the problem,” says Linfa Wang @dukenus. Bats help promote biodiversity and the health of their ecosystems. “The problem arises when we get in contact with them”.
6. “We should move beyond merely responding to deadly pathogens when they arise,” says @PeterDaszak @EcoHealthNYC. “The best way forward is prevention.” 70% of new infectious diseases come from wildlife. We must discover those pathogens in wildlife and develop diagnostic tests.
7. Such efforts should focus on high-risk viral groups in mammals prone to coronavirus infections, such as bats, badgers, civets, pangolins, and primates, says @PeterDaszak @EcoHealthNYC. Developing countries in the tropics should be the frontline of this battle against viruses.
8. New infectious diseases tend to happen in places with lots of changes in land use and where high densities of people and animals mingle and move about. “China is not the only hotspot,” says @PeterDaszak @EcoHealthNYC. Other major emerging economies are also at great risk.
9. Scientists call for One Health approach towards prevention, integrating the management of wildlife health, livestock health, and human health. This involves regularly checking possible infections in livestock, wild animals farmed and traded, and high-risk human populations.
10. Make no mistake: bat-borne coronaviruses will cause more outbreaks, many scientists I talked to say, like Shi Zhengli, Linfa Wang @dukenus, @PeterDaszak @EcoHealthNYC, @Baric_Lab @UNCpublichealth, and Gregory Gray @DukeGHI. “We must find them before they find us,” says Shi.
11. Lastly, but not the least, I’d like to thank the excellent and super professional team at @sciam, especially @deanmvisser and @tanyalewis314 for commissioning and editing the story, and Aaron Shattuck for copyediting and, mostly crucially, for catching a few major mistakes🌷
