We can’t blame animal hosts for virus; it’s OUR fault

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long. . .  --Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Song of Myself, 32 

                                                   Jenny Desmond-HSUS pic

What to do to get through this pandemic – and all the other issues that keep us awake at night and worried all day?  There are myriad suggestions out there to take our minds off current events and scary headlines, and I’m going to try a variation of one of them: binge-watching. 

Instead of movies or TV shows, though, I’m going to set aside a few hours to look at one Dodo video after another, immersing myself in animal stories.  And animals, after all, “do not sweat and whine about their condition,” as Whitman wrote, and “Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,/ Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago. . .”

I'll have popcorn.  And sheer pleasure.  Join me: newsletter@thedodo.com!

But . . . at some point, “the Dodo escape” will end, as it must.  The “real world” awaits.  (And no, a voluntary coma till early November is not an option.)  I and we have to buckle down and get through all this.  

From the overabundance of pandemic-relief info out there, I’ve found two sources to see or read that put things in perspective and suggest directions for action – because we can’t just sit here and hope for the best.

In order of sheer usefulness, first comes a documentary about “How to stop the next pandemic,” produced early this month by the New York Times.  In 14 minutes, it tracks new infectious diseases from 1940 till now, showing the steady increase in their numbers.  Frighteningly, “It’s not just Covid-19.  Pathogens once confined to nature [i.e., wild animals] are making their way into humans on a more regular basis.”

That’s the fault of choices we have made, the film makes clear.  Making better choices in future might head off the next pandemic.  https://www.nytimes.com/video/health/100000007293397/covid-pandemics-causes-documentary.html    

Next up: what is really an adventure story written in the form of an article about how viruses move from wild animals to humans – told from the viewpoint of one virus doing exactly what it exists to do: extend itself “as much as possible in abundance, in geographical space and in time.”  What could be better for an ambitious virus than to spill over into humans, with practically unlimited potential . . .?! 

Starting out small, very likely living in bats isolated in caves or forests -- its natural or reservoir hosts -- the virus may meet up with a potential new host who preys on bats, captures them or shares the same cave: humans. When a virus moves from a non-human animal to a human being, the virus becomes a zoonosis, and “the resulting infection is a zoonotic disease.”

                                          
                                               Denver Post pic

As the article makes clear, this viral path has become more and more common.  For instance, the AIDS pandemic also happened this way, with a virus moving from a chimp to a human.  And we know the rest.

Author of this article (and the book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic), David Quammen puts the blame for Covid-19 squarely on the “catastrophic failures of human foresight, communal will and leadership.”  (Only consider what you’ve already read, and rued, about poor preparation despite warnings, selfish 

behavior by myriad humans and lack of a united front.)  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-covid-evolution.html

The end of this story remains to be written, of course.  Right now, it’s a cliffhanger: will humans get smart, unite and defeat this virus?  Or will the virus prevail, taking its cruel toll indefinitely?  

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Endangered species stamps available again! 

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