Humans infecting animals infecting humans − from COVID-19 to bird flu, preventing pandemics requires protecting all species

When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, humans had been the only species with reported cases of the disease. While early genetic analyses pointed to horseshoe bats as the evolutionary hosts of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, no reports had yet surfaced indicating it could be transmitted from humans to other animal species.

Less than two weeks later, a report from Belgium marked the first infection in a domestic cat – presumably by its owner. Summer 2020 saw news of COVID-19 outbreaks and subsequent cullings in mink farms across Europe and fears of similar calls for culling in North America. Humans and other animals on and around mink farms tested positive, raising questions about the potential for a secondary wildlife reservoir of COVID-19. That is, the virus could infect and establish a transmission cycle in a different species than the one in which it originated.

Researchers have documented this phenomenon of human-to-animal transmission, colloquially referred to as spillback or reverse zoonotic transmission, in both domestic and wild animals. Wildlife may be infected either directly from humans or indirectly from domestic animals infected by humans. This stepping-stone effect provides new opportunities for pathogens to evolve and can radically change how they spread, as seen with influenza and tuberculosis.

For example, spillback has been a long-standing threat to endangered great apes, even among populations with infrequent human contact. The chimpanzees of Gombe National Park, made famous by Jane Goodall’s work, have suffered outbreaks of measles and other respiratory diseases likely resulting from environmental persistence of pathogens spread by people living nearby or by ecotourists.

We are researchers who study the mechanisms driving cross-species disease transmission and how disease affects both wildlife conservation and people. Emerging outbreaks have underscored the importance of understanding how threats to wildlife health shape the emergence and spread of zoonotic pathogens. Our research suggests that looking at historical outbreaks can help predict and prevent the next pandemic.

Autumn Song
Charles Baudelaire
I

Soon we will plunge into the cold darkness;
Farewell, bright light of our too short summers!
I can already hear falling with funereal shocks
The wood resounding on the pavement of the courtyards.

All winter will enter my being: anger,
Hatred, shivers, horror, hard and forced labor,
And, like the sun in its polar hell,
My heart will be nothing more than a red and frozen block.

I listen with a shudder to each log that falls;
The scaffold that is being built has no more muted echo.
My mind is like the tower that succumbs
Under the blows of the tireless and heavy battering ram.

It seems to me, rocked by this monotonous shock,
That a coffin is being nailed in great haste somewhere.
For whom? - Yesterday was summer; here is autumn!
This mysterious noise sounds like a departure.

II

I love the greenish light of your long eyes,
Sweet beauty, but everything today is bitter to me,
And nothing, neither your love, nor the boudoir, nor the hearth,
Is worth to me the sun radiating on the sea.

And yet love me, tender heart! be a mother,
Even for an ungrateful, even for a wicked man;
A lover or sister, be the ephemeral sweetness
Of a glorious autumn or a setting sun.

Short task! The grave awaits; it is greedy!
Ah! let me, my forehead resting on your knees,
Taste, regretting the white and torrid summer,
Of the late season the yellow and sweet ray!

( Music: Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings )
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