From climate change to the coronavirus crisis

I wasn’t planning on writing about this topic but here I am!

A few days ago, Max Bird, a French youtuber, posted a video in which he explains the human impact on the climate and the environment. At the end of his video, he says that big pandemics like the COVID-19 come from the “human pressure on the environment”.

After seeing this, I started thinking, reading lots of articles and it turns out that scientists have been conducting research studies on this topic.

COVID-19 comes from the human pressure.

Diseases like COVID-19, Ebola or the SARS coronavirus (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) are zoonotic, which means that they come from animals. Usually these diseases are found in animals, but they can infect humans as well. Three out of four of new diseases comes from animals, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

By eliminating natural habitats, we expand our human habitat, so interactions between humans and wildlife are increasing. Ecosystems are disrupted because we keep destroying forests, polluting the environment or changing the climate. As a result, animals become closer to us and their diseases become ours. Indeed, animals are poached and sold in our markets, so viruses lose their natural hosts. When that happens, they need to find new hosts which is usually the human body.

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“Pathogens are crossing from animals to humans, and many are able to spread quickly to new places.”

The Guardian

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Photo by Mike Arney on Unsplash

Climate change increases the spread of the virus.

Air pollution tends to increase our susceptibility to viruses. It is estimated that at least 8m people die early every year because of air pollution. Indeed, it causes respiratory infections and chronic heart problems. Therefore, people exposed to this air pollution are more likely to die from COVID-19 because their lungs and their heart are vulnerable.

It’s the same issue with other diseases. According to The Guardian: “Scientists who analysed the SARS coronavirus outbreak in China in 2003 found that infected people who lived in areas with more air pollution were twice as likely to die as those in less polluted places.”

Do we need to change our way of living?

It is obvious that our way of life caused this international crisis. Nowadays we can travel from Canada to China within hours and tons of planes are crossing the sky every day. The fact that people can move from one country to another so easily is part of the process of globalization: this has become our common way of living. So, people, along with diseases, can travel faster than ever before. The COVID-19 was able to spread that much because of globalization.

Finally, the question is what can we do about this? Regarding climate change, I think that it is more than urgent to change our behavior. Now that we know that it can causes sanitary crisis like this, it must be the heart of our concerns even though it was an emergency before. Scientists say that COVID-19 is just the beginning and that we should be prepared for more pandemics. Some countries cannot face this kind of issues, especially poor countries. So, investments are needed as well as education and awareness.

I know I am not a scientist nor a journalist, but I found the topic interesting since the link between coronavirus and climate change isn’t obvious. I hope you guys enjoyed this article.

Take care, Ella.

Sources : The Guardian, The Guardian, Scientific American, Ouest France (in French), L’Obs (in French).

A TED talk about this topic : https://www.ted.com/talks/alanna_shaikh_coronavirus_is_our_future

Max Bird’s video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GofLYMzKzv4