It is perhaps understandable that we are shocked by the monkey pox virus so short of Covid-19. But the monkeypox virus is not a real threat. Other viruses are.
Business AM sums up some real threats: “In the past three weeks, there have been nearly 100 cases and 18 human deaths from a rare tick-borne disease in Iraq; a new Ebola virus outbreak and more than 100 cases of bubonic plague.” have been found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and just two years after Africa was declared free of wild polio, new cases have surfaced in Malawi and Mozambique. A dangerous form of typhoid is circulating in Nepal, India and China. There are alarming outbreaks on several continents of mosquito diseases such as malaria, dengue and West Nile virus.
African swine fever continues to plague the world’s pigs and various types of deadly bird flu or bird flu are spreading, requiring the culling of hundreds of millions of poultry. Two decades ago we had mad cow disease and more recently Q fever, brought to us via goats. All small beer compared to what is to come.
Vets and ecologists have also warned this month about mysterious fungal diseases found in fish and marine life in Australia and countries in the Middle East, as well as deadly diseases in dogs and other pets.”
We live with 7 billion people, along with 1 billion pigs and two billion chickens. It turns out that there are about 1.6 billion cattle. Sheep and goats: two billion. This can hardly help but lead to zoonosis, the transmission of animal diseases to humans, possibly via another animal, such as a bat or rat.
It is no coincidence that 335 new and potentially deadly diseases have emerged worldwide since 1940, during a period when the human population has tripled, the climate has changed and there has been a spectacular increase in meat consumption.
Most worrying at the moment is the threat of a new bird flu. But something else is of course also possible.