This graph can tell you
a lot about your future.
Each bar shows how many
new infectious diseases
emerged in a year.
In 1944, there was one.
In ’48, three.
We have no immunity
to new pathogens.
Each disease on this list
posed a new pandemic threat.
It was around 1960 when
the number began to rise.
By the time 1990
rolled around,
it wasn’t just two or three
new diseases that year —
there were 18.
Soon after, the trend
became so clear,
a scientist appeared
on TV with a warning.
“What worries me the
most is that we’re
going to miss the
next emerging disease,
that we’re going to suddenly
find a SARS virus that
moves from one part of
the planet to another,
wiping out people
as it moves along.”
That was 17 years ago.
And today, stuck at home
in a seemingly never-ending
pandemic purgatory, it
appears that we did not
heed his warning.
Covid-19 has opened
our eyes to the danger.
But has it opened them enough
to look past this pandemic
to what our future holds?
We tracked down that
same scientist today
to ask him: How do you
stop the next pandemic?
He said the trend
isn’t looking good.
“We see an increased frequency
of emerging pandemics.
We also still have the
ones that emerged recently.
We still have H.I.V.
We still have Ebola.
We still have H1N1.
So we’re adding to the stock
of known pandemic pathogens
with new ones at
an increasing rate.
That’s not a good place for
us as a species right now.”
If you want to know how
to stop the next pandemic,
you first need to know
why they’re happening.
“We humans are an
ecological anomaly.
There have never been
7.7 billion large-body
vertebrates of one
species on this planet
before in the
history of earth.”
This is David Quammen.
He’s a —
“— a very unmystical, black-hole
Darwinian materialist.”
Well, David’s a storyteller.
He’s been writing about the
origin of infectious diseases
for decades.
“So we are unprecedented,
and we’re
causing ecological wreckage
that’s unprecedented,
and there are
consequences of that.”
[explosions]
“Pandemics emerge due to
our ecological footprint.
And our cultural footprint is
accelerating exponentially.”
Remember this guy?
That’s Peter Daszak, the
scientist who warned us in 2003.
He’s sometimes referred
to as a virus hunter.
He goes out to
preemptively find viruses
before they find us.
“It’s the connection
between humans and animals
that’s driving this.
And that connection
happens where
people move into a new
region through things
like road building and
deforestation, mining,
palm oil production, timber
and livestock production.
People move into new areas.
They come across wildlife
that we’ve not really
had much contact with.
The pathogens spill
over into them, and then
can spread through
that connectivity.”
[birds squawking]
“We’re encroaching
on their habitats.
And just many, many more
opportunities for spillover
events to occur.”
Christian Walzer
is a global veterinarian
and executive director for the
Wildlife Conservation Society.
“The destruction happening
at the edge of forests
is one of the areas where
we’re very concerned.
Changing the trees that bats,
for example, would roost on,
they may be driven to an edge.
They may be driven into
an area where there’s
more human population.
And suddenly, you
create a contact area
which didn’t exist before.”
So what do these new
contact areas look like?
In this video, we’re
going to show you
three ways in
which our changing
relationship with
wildlife is increasingly
creating dangerous
pandemic possibilities.
So let’s say you want
to sell toothpaste.
No, peanut butter.
Wait, wait shampoo.
Never mind, it doesn’t matter.
In all of those cases,
you need palm oil.
So you burn down a forest in
Malaysia to grow palm trees.
But that forest was
home to some bats.
So the bats find a new
home, near some fruit trees
on a pig farm.
But soon, a virus
from those bats
makes its way into the
farmers who own the property.
This isn’t science fiction.
This is how the Nipah
virus came to humans.
“Why was it getting from the
fruit bats to the people?
Because of habitat destruction.
Most of the forest
in northern Malaysia,
where the bats
would ordinarily
be living wild and feeding
on wild fruit, most
of that forest had
been destroyed.
In place of the forest, among
other human enterprises,
were giant pig
farms, piggeries,
where thousands of pigs
were kept in a single corral,
being raised for meat.
Some of those corrals were
shaded by domestic fruit
trees that were
planted to grow mangoes
or to grow starfruit
for another revenue
stream for these pig farms.
So the bats, having
lost their wild habitat,
are attracted to the
domestic fruit trees.
They come in, they
eat the mango,
they eat the starfruit,
they drop the pulp
into the pig corrals.
And with it, they drop
their feces and their urine
and their virus.
It gets into the pigs,
spreads through the pigs,
then gets in the pig
farmers, pork sellers,
and other people.”
Land use change
is one big reason
more infectious diseases are
making their way into humans.
However, it’s not
just animal habitat
we need to worry about.
Animal diversity
can be just as important.
“Loss of biodiversity
itself has
led to emergence of disease.
When you lose
species, you tend
to be left with
certain groups.
And if they happen
to carry viruses,
and if they dominate
the landscape,
you will be exposed to those
viruses more than others.”
This story doesn’t begin
in the jungles of Africa
or forests of Southeast Asia.
We begin in the
American suburbs.
“If humans cut down the forest
and turn it into a suburb,
like those
beautiful suburbs we
know in semi-rural Connecticut,
where there are great
big lawns in front
of nice houses, and
there are hedges,
and then there’s
somebody else’s house
with a great big
lawn in front of it,
that’s really good habitat
for white-footed mice,
and also for
white-tailed deer.
Not so good for
larger mammals,
like foxes, like weasels,
or for birds of prey.
So the hawks and the
owls tend to disappear,
the foxes and the
weasels tend to disappear
from this environment.
What happens then?
You get more
white-footed mice.
You get an abundance
of white-footed mice
because their predators
are not suppressing them.”
Having an abundance
of white-footed mice
wouldn’t be so
bad, except they
are the natural reservoir
host of Lyme disease.
This means they
harbor the bacteria,
but it doesn’t
make them sick.
So if there was a biological
diverse landscape, well,
then —
“The pathogen is shared
amongst the various hosts
that are in that landscape.
Many of these hosts
are incompetent
and are unable to actually
transmit the disease.
And so it becomes
a dilution effect.”
“The net result
of this reduction
in biological diversity,
changing the landscape,
making it more
fragmented, less forested,
is more ticks infecting
more little kids
when they go out to roll
around in the grass and bust
through the hedges.
So there is more
Lyme disease.”
And yet, Covid-19 may not
have started this way at all.
“In view of the
ongoing outbreak,
if you create a completely
artificial interface where
you go and capture animals
regionally, globally,
and bring them
together at one place,
like at a wildlife
trading market,
then you’re obviously creating
fantastic opportunities
for viruses to spill over.”
A pathogen from
an animal might not
be able to spill over
directly into humans,
but it could spill over
into another animal,
evolve or adapt, and
then infect humans.
With a rotating variety
of animals stacked
on top of each other, the
pandemic possibilities
are significant.
This is one theory of
how the coronavirus may
have started in China.
The thing is, in the past, a
spillover event from this
wildlife market may not
have affected you.
“We also have to take one step
back from the sort of very
romantic idea that these are
isolated communities living
in central Africa.
You know, I always point out
that a rat which you capture
somewhere in northern
Congo now, within 12 hours,
you’re in Brazzaville.”
“The Republic of the Congo
now has a new modern highway
and economic artery thanks
to Chinese assistance.”
See, just 10 years ago, that
would have been impossible.
But then, well, China —
“The national highway
was complete —”
China wanted access
to minerals to mine.
In exchange, they helped
with infrastructure.
Now, there’s a road.
They’ve created
accessways, not only
for the rare earths which are so
important for
your mobile phone,
but for viruses as well.
“If you catch the
plane that evening
and you take your rat with you
because you want to bring it
to your family in Paris,
it’s less than 24 hours
from a very, very
remote community
all the way to Paris.”
But luggage is
screened, you say.
The rat would get caught.
Maybe.
But really, the rat
isn’t the biggest threat.
It’s you.
Your bag gets screened.
Your blood does not.
“We all have a share
of the responsibility.
It’s not just people in
China who want to eat bats
or who want to eat pangolins.
That may be the immediate
cause of this spillover,
but in terms of the
initiation of these things,
generally, there is also enough
blame, enough responsibility
to go around.”
The three ways in
which a pandemic
could start shown
in this video all
have one thing in common —
us.
“Here’s what we did.
We changed the planet
so significantly and so
fundamentally that we dominate
every ecosystem on earth,
right now.
We are the dominant
vertebrate species.
Our livestock are the dominant
biomass on the planet.
And that’s the issue.
What we’ve done is we’ve
created this pathway
through our consumption
habits by which
viruses can get from
wildlife into people
and then infect us.
And our response is we blame
one country versus another,
we blame people who eat
one species over people
who don't eat another
and we blame nature.
Well, no.
We need to point the finger
directly at ourselves.
This is not a whiny argument
that the world’s falling
apart and it’s
our fault, this is
an argument that says we are
the reason why this happens.
We, therefore, have the
power to change it.”
So how do you stop
the next pandemic?
“Well, this is what you do.
No. 1, you find
out what viruses
there are in wildlife.
We estimate 1.7 million
unknown viruses.
Let’s go and discover them.
Let’s get the viral sequences.
Let’s get them into the
hands of vaccine and drug
developers, and get them to
design vaccines and drugs
that are broadly effective —
not just against one pathogen,
but against a
number of pathogens.
But No. 2,
and critically, we
need to work with the
communities that are
on the front line of this.
And that’s a solution that the
public are less excited by.
It’s old-fashioned.
It’s working in
foreign countries
with different communities
that do different things.
It’s hard work, and it’s less
attractive to the voting public.
We’ve got to do
all of the above.
High-tech, low-tech, but
focused on prevention.
It’s possible and it’s doable.
Let’s get on and do it.”
Great.
Let’s do it.
No more pandemics.
There’s just one problem —
money.
“Please, in the back."
“Thank you, Mr. President.
U.S. intelligence is
saying this week
that the N.I.H., under the
Obama administration in 2015,
gave that lab $3.7 million
in a grant.
Why would the U.S. give a
grant like that to China?”
“We will end that grant
very quickly, but —”
That’s Donald Trump
canceling a grant that
was funding research
to stop pandemics, including
studying coronaviruses in bats.
But the grant wasn’t
going to China.
It was going to —
you guessed it —
Peter Daszak.
That grant started in 2015.
“2015?
Who was president
then, I wonder?”
“We have to put in place an
infrastructure, not just here
at home, but
globally that allows
us to see it quickly,
isolate it quickly, respond
to it quickly.”
This is not a new fight.
“But if we wait for
a pandemic to appear,
it will be too
late to prepare.”
What is new is our
reaction to it.
“It’s nobody’s fault —
it’s not like — who
could have ever predicted
anything like this?”
“What worries me the
most is that we’re
going to miss the next
emerging disease.”
If we don’t want more
Covid-19-like events
in the future, we need to stop
pandemics before they happen.
That means
depoliticizing pandemics
and investing in prevention.
“I think we need to wake up.
There’s a certain
moment right now
where the public
around the world,
because this pandemic has got to
every country on the planet,
the public now see their
own health as intimately
connected to why
these pandemics emerge
through the wildlife
trade or deforestation.
So we need to really
drive that message home
that producing
a healthier planet
will actually
save our own lives
and improve our own healths.”
