The first case was reported back in December, in Hubei province. Since then, the Coronavirus has done a bit of traveling. Not only has it spread to nearly every administrative region in China – as of Jan. 23, Coronavirus cases were confirmed in China, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam — two cases have now been confirmed in the United States. This last Thursday, Jan 23, the World Health Organization made a decision that it was not yet time to declare a global emergency. However, the vote was not unanimous, and the WHO may be changing its mind as the virus continues to spread.
China has taken drastic steps to contain the outbreak. Wuhan, Huanggang and Ezhou are under lockdown. In Wuhan, the city of 11 million people where the outbreak began, hospitals are surrounded by rows of tents in an attempt to contain the overspill of patients. Public transportation is shut down and people are having a difficult time making their way to any medical facility. Lines stretch around the block with people trying to get in, get checked out, get treated. Once inside, the scene resembles that of a war zone triage. A social media clip, which has been verified by CNN, showed a hall filled with not only patients’ beds, but dozens of ghostly figures dressed from head to foot in hazmat suits. In the city outside, pharmacies have begun to run out of medicine and essentials and people are scrambling to buy as much food as possible before supplies run out.
The scene is reminiscent of films in which aliens invade the earth and in fact, that is pretty much what has happened here – a virus which is not of human origin has invaded the country, and panic is spreading. Chinese New Years celebrations have been cancelled as far as Beijing in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading. China has gone so far as to shut down Shanghai Disneyland and part of the Great Wall, and public transportation has been suspended, stranding millions of travelers at the start of the Lunar New Years holiday.
“We are now seeing second and third generation spread,” said Dr. David Heymann, the chairperson of a WHO committee that is gathering data on the virus. Third generation means that the virus has jumped – the first victim became infected after handling animals at the market in Wuhan. But the illness has now begun spreading from human to human. The virus initially appeared to spread only by very close contact such as would occur within a family, from hugging, kissing, or sharing food and cooking utensils. Now, evidence shows that any crowd or social gathering could be a breeding swamp, with the virus spread through sneezing, coughing or casual skin contact.
The virus, as far as officials can tell, originated in illegally traded animals in a market; but chances are, the animals were not of local origin. When we look to where so many of these pandemics originate, a frightening picture begins to emerge that is far more ominous than any single outbreak. HIV came from a rain forest. So did Ebola, Yellow fever, and Zika. There’s a very good chance that the illegally traded animals that spawned the Coronavirus were from a similarly remote forest region. So why are these viruses only beginning to emerge now? Because man, in his infinite capitalistic wisdom, is on the verge of destroying the last places of refuge for a variety of exotic and little known animals who until recent years have kept to themselves. The result? Over the past century, the number of new infectious viruses emerging each year has nearly quadrupled. The number of resulting outbreaks each year has more than tripled, and it hits close to home – in the US, we have seen more than a dozen new human diseases appear over the past 25 years – killer tick-borne viruses, a new type of leprosy, and a new hemorrhagic fever just to name a few.
This is a purely man made disaster. The viruses that the disease-bearing animals carry have been around for centuries, peacefully coexisting as a natural part of the ecosystem of the rain forests. The inhabitants of these systems are generally not harmed by them. But as the trees are torn down and these animals homes are destroyed, there is nowhere left for them to go. And where the animals go, so do the viruses.
As I write, only 15% of the world’s rain forests are still intact. The rest have already been burned flat and replaced by palm oil plantations, farms, mines, and, sadly, even shopping malls.
As the Coronavirus continues to spread, it is something to think about: There is a price to pay for what we optimistically call progress. If we are not careful, the price that we pay may be our lives.
