The epidemic of the new crown pneumonia continues to spread on the earth, and regarding the origin of the new crown virus, the scientific community generally believes that it originated from animals at the earliest. The United Nations Environment Programme believes that bats are likely to be the source of this outbreak. Pathogens are transmitted from animals "to cross species boundaries" to humans. Such diseases are called "animal diseases". On July 6th, the United Nations Environment Program and the International Livestock Research Institute jointly issued a report saying that in the past 20 years, outbreaks of zoonotic diseases have become more frequent, and the threat to humans is increasing. New Coronary Pneumonia is not the first virus attack from animals, nor will it be the last.
In August 1997, in Indonesia, wildfires spread. Eight million hectares of land were burnt, and animals living in the rainforest fled their lives. The smoke from the mountain fire covered the land like a thick cotton. The sunlight could not penetrate, there was no rainfall, the leaves became yellow, and the flowers and fruits did not grow.
The fruit bats in the rainforest are difficult to be full, so they have to migrate to find new habitats.
A group of fruit bats flew to Malaysia across the sea from Indonesia, and the sweet fruits in the tropical orchard became their food. The saliva of fruit bats was left on the fruit, and some debris dropped in the nearby pigsty.
Pigs licked up the fruit residues on the ground, and soon, some pigs showed symptoms of convulsions or acute high fever. Afterwards, workers on the pig farm also began to show symptoms such as confusion and convulsions.
In early 1997, many farm workers got strange illnesses. At least 20 workers had a continuous fever, and it lasted for a long time.
At that time, five seriously ill patients were admitted to hospital and were diagnosed with viral encephalitis, and one of them died. A year later, in the autumn of 1998, this strange disease appeared again among pig farm workers. Six months later, 265 people were diagnosed with infection, of which 105 died and the mortality rate was as high as 40%. Another year later, in 1999, researchers at the University of Malaysia School of Medicine finally isolated and identified the virus that caused the disease, which originated from fruit bats, and named the virus: Nipah virus.
Twenty-three years later, the new coronavirus, which poses a global health threat, has one thing in common with Nipah virus.
Such infectious diseases originating from animals and cross-species are transmitted to humans are called zoonotic diseases. As early as one of the oldest cultural cradle of mankind-the inscription on the Mesopotamian civilization left over 2,000 years ago, there are records of zoonotic diseases.
It is now 2000 years after AD, and the threat to humans caused by zoonotic diseases has not diminished and is still increasing.
On July 6, the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Livestock Research Institute jointly released a report entitled "Preventing the Next Pandemic: Zoonoses and How to Block the Chain of Transmission." The report shows that there are about 2 million people worldwide each year Died of zoonotic diseases, most of them died in low- and middle-income countries.
In 2013, in a remote small village in Guinea, West Africa, a one and a half year old boy played under the hollow tree behind his home yard. He soon developed fever, vomiting, and black bowel movements after returning home. Two days later, the boy died.
The little boy was infected with the Ebola virus, which had a very high mortality rate and was highly contagious.
The virus also originated from fruit bats. Due to the excessive deforestation of humans, fruit bats began to move to the gathering place of humans, and the bats hanging upside down on hollow trees became the source of the deadly epidemic.
Later, between 2013 and 2016, the spread of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people.
According to statistics from the "Global Forest Monitoring" system, in 2019, the world lost an average of 71,400 square meters of tropical forest every minute, an area equivalent to 10 football fields. 80% of the species on earth live in forests, and the dramatic reduction in forests has forced wildlife into the human life circle. Moreover, zoonotic diseases do not only occur in economically backward agricultural areas.
In 2014, the American singer Avril Lavigne, known as the "Queen of Punk Music" by the women's magazine "Bustle", developed Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is also a zoonotic disease. The pathogen is a spirochete, from this humble tick, vertebrates bitten by ticks, such as deer and squirrels, will be infected and become the host of the spirochete.
In 2019, the US Centers for Disease Control issued a report saying that the expansion of the suburbs of the northeastern United States has led to increased contact between ticks and other host animals and humans, and an increased incidence of Lyme disease. Because the early symptoms are similar to the common cold or multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease is also difficult to diagnose.
According to a report released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019, the number of people infected with the Bovisan virus, which is also transmitted by ticks, is increasing year by year. Poisson virus can cause inflammation of brain tissue, with a mortality rate of up to 10%, and there are currently no treatment drugs and vaccines.
Therefore, the health of humans, domestic animals, or wild animals and plants can no longer be viewed alone, they should be'integrity health'.
More than 2300 years ago, Xunzi, an ancient Chinese thinker, once said this simple truth in "The Book of Heaven".
History and science have repeatedly proven that human beings, as part of the earth’s ecosystem, cannot stand above or be alone. Only by forming good connections and interactions with the natural environment and other organisms can we have truly sustainable “integrity health”.
(Editor Liu Zhe)