Everyone is still dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, even a year after it sank its teeth into the US. Many people lost loved ones and friends to the disease, and many more lost a year of their lives to lengthy lockdown efforts. However, while we’ve not even dispensed with this pandemic, the next global pandemic is even closer than you think.
That might sound awful, excruciating and exhausting all at once. How can another pandemic be on the way when we’re not even done with this one? And where is it going to come from? Let’s take a closer look.
Zoonotic Diseases
There’s an entire class of diseases, called zoonotic diseases, that are classified by their ability to jump from an animal host to a human host. The coronavirus, for instance, is one such zoonotic disease, likely having jumped from bats into humans. Other prominent examples, like swine flu and avian flu, show just how scary these zoonotic diseases can be if they get a foothold in the human population.
The danger of zoonotic diseases is that they could mutate in bizarre ways that make them very, very deadly and contagious. While COVID has reaped a grisly death toll, the next pandemic could be even more brutal. Some infectious disease experts believe we got off lucky with the death toll from COVID, and that things could have been even worse with a slightly deadlier virus.
The Next One Is Close
Here’s the problem with these zoonotic diseases: another one is close. Closer than you even think. It’s not as simple as telling everyone to stay away from bats. After all, bat-themed tourist attractions remain incredibly popular in some parts of the world. The main issue, however, has to do with suburbanization and the erosion of wild areas.
Human settlements are plunging deeper and deeper into wilderness regions. This is slowly but surely bringing humans in some parts of the world into more consistent contact with animals we would otherwise only see on TV. Couple this with increased demand for exotic pets, and the animal markets that meet that demand, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
China tried outlawing wet markets, like the one SARS likely broke out from in 2003, after that epidemic came to a close. However, what they found was that the demand was still there, so the exotic market just went underground. This is the problem we face: human demand for animal products and pets will always bring us into contact with the very vectors for the next global pandemic.
