How Humans Cause Pandemics and How to Stop Them

QDT interviewed Dr. Michael Greger, M.D., to gain insights from his upcoming book, How to Survive a Pandemic, available now in audiobook format.

How coronavirus outbreaks happen

Where did the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak originate?

Ground zero for the COVID-19 pandemic was the Hua’nan Market in Wuhan, China, to which most of the first human cases could be traced. First thought to be a SARS-coronavirus, it was found to be a virus later named SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It's the cause of coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19. Before it became known as SARS-CoV-2, however, it was known as the Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus.

Described as the largest wholesale seafood market in Central China, the Hua’nan Market reportedly also sold seventy-five species of wild animals. Although there are fish coronaviruses, more than 90 percent of the samples that turned up positive for the virus were found in the section of the half-million-square-foot seafood market that trafficked in exotic animals sold for food.

The current theory is that COVID-19 originated in bats before jumping to humans after passing through an intermediate host, thought to be the pangolin. Between the demand for their meat as a delicacy and their scales for use in traditional medicines, pangolins are the most trafficked mammal in the world. Coronaviruses found in two different groups of diseased pangolins being smuggled into China were found to be about 90 percent identical with the COVID-19 virus. As well, the pangolin coronavirus spike protein’s critical receptor binding region is virtually identical to the human strain.

The current theory is that COVID-19 originated in bats before jumping to humans after passing through an intermediate host, thought to be the pangolin.

Regardless of which animal it was, that one meal or medicine may end up costing humanity trillions of dollars and millions of lives.

What are the links between animals/livestock and pandemic diseases? How do modern farming practices assist in the evolution of new viruses?

There is a single species responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic—humans. Over the last few decades, hundreds of human pathogens have emerged at a rate unprecedented in human history. Emerged from where? Mostly from animals.

The AIDS virus is blamed on the butchering of primates in the bushmeat trade in Africa. We created mad cow disease when we turned cows into carnivores and cannibals. SARS and COVID-19 have been traced back to the exotic wild animal trade. Our last pandemic, swine flu in 2009, didn't arise from a wet market in Asia; it was...

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