It wasn’t as if we hadn’t been warned. After SARS and MERS, bird flu and swine flu, the World Health Organisation and others, notably Bill Gates, observed that it was just a matter of time until a similar but more virulent disease defeated attempts to contain it and swept the world.
Covid-19 may not be it, but it’s bad enough. It caught us off guard. China, where it first emerged, imposed a rapid lockdown. South Korea did the same. But when it spread to Italy, and to Spain and France and the UK and the USA, authorities paused to consider what to do and most likely left it late. It is known that there are many more cases in the UK than published figures suggest, and it may be that the mass outings to parks, beaches and countryside over the spring equinox weekend escalated infections beyond what was already an emergency.
Before the virus struck, we were preoccupied with climate change and the measures which would be necessary to achieve zero emissions by 2030. Some of us were frustrated at the lack of significant action. But in a bizarre twist of fate, the coronavirus has achieved the kind of shift in our way of life that climate activists were hoping for. While the climate has for the time being dropped down the public agenda, a dramatic reduction in fuel usage, air pollution and wasteful consumerism has been evident. But virus and climate are not separate issues. There is a direct link via deforestation and wildlife trafficking.
Coronaviruses, like Ebola and HIV, exist amongst various mammalian hosts deep in the world’s rain forests and remote mountain ranges. As human activity encroaches and destroys the forest, interactions between people and wild animals provide the opportunity for these readily mutable viruses to jump from one species to another. Humans have no prior exposure or immunity and off goes another epidemic.
Deforestation and habitat destruction, almost as much as carbon dioxide emissions, are responsible for climate change. But the catalyst which takes viruses out into the wider world is the trafficking of wildlife and wildlife products, and in countries are far apart as Congo and China, eating them. There seems little doubt too that markets for pseudo-medicinal products in countries such as Viet Nam and China bear a huge responsibility. Bird flu and swine flu came from Chinese markets. SARS was traced to palm civets, in turn infected by bats, in a Chinese market. Early reports of the new coronavirus placed its origin in a ‘wet’ wildlife market in the provincial capital of Wuhan, China.
The world cannot afford for this to go on