Coronavirus is far from the only ‘zoonosis’, or disease spread by animals; many millions are affected globally by others every year. For a helpful big picture review from the UK Telegraph see Diseases jumping from animals to humans is not new–it has long been deadly, but we can learn from it:
If you thought that a disease jumping from an animal to a person and going on to cause global mayhem was something of a freak incident, then think again.
From bubonic plague to Ebola to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), there is a non-human creature at the root of many of history’s pandemics and major disease outbreaks – in these cases the creature ‘culprits’ being, in order, a rat, a bat, a civet cat and a camel.
HIV/AIDS, for which we are still awaiting a vaccine, has its roots in human interaction with primates. Spanish influenza, which killed an estimated 50 million people in 1918-19, is now believed to have originated in wild fowl. And swine and avian influenzas speak for themselves.
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