To Prevent the Next Pandemic, Protect Nature

Spreading around the world at the speed of light, COVID-19 has now infected more than 2.5 million people and killed almost 177,000. Although the virus’s origins are still a little murky, it’s highly likely that it jumped from species to species, until it hit ours.

Trading diseases with wildlife isn’t new. In the Middle Ages, the bubonic plague—caused by a bacterium—originated in city rats and was typically transferred to humans via a bite by an infected flea. The 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu) has been traced back to birds and killed an estimated 50 million people, about one-third of the planet’s population. In 2009, the less fatal swine flu was sourced to pigs raised for food in North America; and HIV/AIDS started as a virus in Old World monkeys in Africa. Recently, the frequency of disease outbreaks has been increasing steadily. Between 1980 and 2013, there were 12,012 recorded outbreaks, comprising 44 million individual cases and affecting every country in the world.