Environmental Connections of Pandemics

Mao Zedong, the leader of the People’s Republic of China passed a decree to kill sparrows in 1958, as he thought they were extremely harmful to the agriculture and were posing impediments in the path of China’s economic development. It disturbed the ecological balance and culminated into great famine of China which spread over the span of three years from 1958 to 1961. In these three years as many as 45 million people died due to hunger, economic mismanagement, environmental disaster and state terror. As millions of sparrows were killed in China then, the locusts’ attack on fields spoiled the agriculture farms and engulfed entire nation under deadly famine. Studies suggest that because of high fertility of sparrows they eat substantial amount of food grains, yet they help us by eating other harmful insects such as locusts. In non- arable urban environment sparrows are mostly insect eaters and very useful to us. Author has placed a sparrow nest at the entrance which is duly inhabited. Others in the locality are also following suit. One gentle man used coconut cover to make the nest as shown.

Sparrow nest made of coconut cover
Great famine of China forced people to adopt barbaric life style for survival then. They ate every animal and even human flesh including that of their dear ones. That era changed the food habits of Chinese and since then they started eating whatever moves or crawls. Establishment of wet market in China is the outcome of this development. Thus inculcated food habits are the cause of increased human -animal interactions and leading to the outbreak of major pandemics including COVID-19. As genesis of COVID-19 is associated with the wet market of Wuhan China.
Bat is the host of most of the deadly viruses. As many as 66 families of viruses have been ascribed to them viz. coronavirus, filovirus, lyssavirus and paramyxovirus etc. Two varieties of bats namely Megachiroptera (flying foxes) and Microchiroptera [Charles H. Calisher et al.] carry most of the deadly viruses involved with the zoonotic pandemics. Zoonotic disease is the one that transmits from animals to humans or that normally exists in animals but that can infect humans. There are multitudes of zoonotic diseases like anthrax, SARS, MERS, SARS, Nipah, Zika, COVID etc. Increased human interaction with the animals has caused these viruses to jump from bats to humans directly or mostly through some intermediate host. In the case of COVID-19, pangolin is assumed to be the intermediate host between bats and humans.

John Vidal in his recent article in Guardian discovered that most of the pandemics on earth have occurred due to disturbance in ecological balance and increase in human- animal interaction. He visited ‘Mayibout’ in north of Gabon (Africa) and observed that probably Ebola jumped into humans from Chimpanzee. According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) USA, about three-quarters of diseases that infect humans originate in animals. Kate Jones from University College London sees the animal-borne diseases as significant threat to global health, security and economies and finds zoonotic disease to link with environmental changes driven by human developmental activities such as disruption of pristine forests driven by logging, hunting, mining, road building in remote places, rapid urbanisation, and population growth. According to Disease Ecologist Thomas Gillespie from Emory University, “pathogens do not respect boundaries”. He finds direct correlation between shrinking natural habitats of animals and the risk of transmission of diseases from animals to humans. Message from UN chief Mr Antonio Guterres on Earth Day citing COVID-19 pandemic as an unprecedented wake-up call is relevant owing to its impending economic and social consequences.
The mentioned instances are sufficient to warn humans against fiddling with nature and over exploitation of natural resources. It’s high time we should control ourselves, check exponential growth in population and lead a nature friendly life style. Otherwise such pandemics will routinely pester us thus putting our survival into jeopardy.

Dr Prashant Thapliyal
Assistant Professor
Army Cadet College
Indian Military Academy
Dehradun