The Washington Post website reported on September 1 that in the 13 years of working as an infectious disease doctor in the suburbs of New York City, Azfar Chaka has been battling the virus, not only conventional viruses, but also rare viruses. But he has never experienced such a "viral summer". No one has experienced it, at least not in this area.
The coronavirus has been going on for about 3 years, and its driving factor is a more contagious variant; Global outbreaks of monkeypox and a mysterious hepatitis plague previously healthy children; Poliovirus has been found in sewage systems in London and New York; Chaka found polio among patients in Jerusalem and Rockland County, where he works, a county north of New York City with a population of more than 300,000.
Polio was one of the most terrible diseases of the early 1950s, and its comeback is particularly troubling. In an 800-page medical review recently read in preparation for recertification, Chaka found that "there was little mention of polio." Because our impression at the time was that it had almost been eradicated."
The "traditional border" has been eroded
Warming, loss of forests and global travel have accelerated the spread of pathogens from animals to humans, as well as human-to-human transmission in different parts of the world.
Over the past 50 years, the global population has doubled to nearly 8 billion, driving the expansion of megacities and the demand for land to build houses, grow crops and raise animals. According to the United Nations, global land change has resulted in the loss of nearly 25 million acres of forest each year, eroding the traditional border between the human and animal worlds.
Close contact with animals exposes us to pathogens they carry, which cause 60% of human diseases.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said: "We live in a world where microbes are evolving, and microbes are using as much of their advantages as possible. ”
Some experts point out that, at a deeper level, we have demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the place that humans and microbes occupy on Earth. Viruses appeared long before we did, and in much more numbers than we do. According to an editorial in the British journal Nature Review Microbiology, if all viruses are connected end to end, "they will extend 100 million light years."
The German virologist Karin Maureen put it this way: "We are invaders of the world of viruses, not the other way around." ”
The world is increasingly concerned about infectious diseases
The summer of 2022 could be a time when humanity begins to understand the situation. Infectious diseases became big news.
"In the past, if one of the 100 outbreaks in Africa was reported and brought to the fore, it was rare. But now, more outbreaks are being reported. Jimmy Whitworth, PhD in Infectious Diseases, Epidemiology and Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said.
Western health authorities and the media have paid little attention to the monkeypox outbreak in Nigeria in 2017, but they have become more aggressive in finding harmful microbes in soil and sewage.
Stephen Kissler, a postdoc in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard's Chan School of Public Health, said: "As we pay more and more attention to infectious diseases, one of the things that comes with it is that we are now studying the impact of wastewater on a variety of diseases, including polio. We were able to spot it in places we might not have noticed before. ”
Kissler said he thinks the high level of viral activity this summer "is partly bad luck, like a bad storm is partly bad luck." But unfortunately, we can start to anticipate these events more and more frequently."
The trend most often cited by scientists is the powerful impact of human behavior on the planet. According to the United Nations, a major turning point occurred in 2009, when the urban population exceeded the rural population for the first time.
The increase in urban dwellers has led to an overburdening and pollution of water and sanitation systems, especially in poorer countries. These conditions lay the foundation for the spread of diseases such as cholera. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, cholera infected 820,000 people and killed nearly 10,000. Although cholera is caused by bacteria, water also transmits viruses, including hepatitis A and E viruses, rotavirus, norovirus, and poliovirus.
Climate change increases the risk of infection
Climate change is also exacerbating the risk of infectious diseases. The researchers published an article last month in the British journal Nature that 58 percent of the 375 infectious diseases they surveyed "deteriorated to some degree as a result of climate disasters." Only 16% of diseases are reduced as a result of climate change.
While the climate has brought humans closer to animals, warm temperatures are attracting insects and other disease carriers to some parts of the world that were once too cold to survive.
The "steady northward march" of Asian tiger mosquitoes is a prime example, Whitworth said, bringing diseases such as chikungunya, Zika and dengue to the New World. The mosquito, officially known as Aedes albopictus, once found mainly in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. But over the past 50 years, it has spread to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North america and South America. The mosquito first appeared in the United States in the mid-1980s in tire dumps in Harris County, Texas. Since then, it has appeared in most parts of the country.
The migration of tiger mosquitoes is largely due to the international trade in the 1 billion used tires generated each year. Stagnant water accumulates from old tires, forming an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes.
Eradicating a disease is not an easy task
Eradicating infectious diseases is not an easy task. The World Health Organization began its efforts to eradicate smallpox in 1959 and finally declared victory in 1980, the only operation that has successfully eradicated infectious diseases in humans. Similar efforts to end polio have taken more than 30 years and cost $17 billion.
Kiesler said the effort to eradicate polio would be "much tougher" given that an unvaccinated Rockland County man was diagnosed with polio this summer, who had recently traveled to Poland and Hungary and where the virus was found in the sewage systems of two large cities. "For infectious diseases, there's a big difference between no infection and a little infection."
As long as COVID-19 continues, and as long as other viral threats continue to emerge, world health leaders will not have the opportunity to focus on polio.
Measures taken to combat COVID-19 – containment, social distancing and wearing masks – may have contributed to far below average deaths from more common viruses such as influenza. However, as people relax these protections, the virus is returning to communities with low levels of immunity.
"I think that explains very well the hepatitis that we see." Dean Bloomberg, chair of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of California, Davis, said. He was referring to this year's global outbreak of hepatitis. "There is very little infection during the lockdown period, and as the epidemic develops, there is a repressed susceptibility."
Bloomberg has expressed concern about another virus that has been circulating in the United States since at least the spring. The virus can cause fever in newborns and infants, an encephalitis-like syndrome and severe sepsis.
What worries Bloomberg the most, however, is measles, which he describes as "one of the most contagious pathogens known to mankind." Measles can be serious or even fatal to young children.
Bloomberg said: "Even if the population's immunity decline is small, it can lead to widespread spread. We added travel as travel restrictions were relaxed. Most of the trips will travel to areas of the world where measles transmission rates are high. I think it's only a matter of time before more measles enters the U.S. ”
In Uruguay, Morattorio said he suspects the next threat could come from Majaro, a dengue-like disease carried by mosquitoes native to tropical forests of South America that "has the potential to become a new Zika virus." He said he hoped people would learn from this pandemic and additional viral campaign this summer, "but I'm not sure policymakers have learned the lessons."
Fighting infectious diseases should be a top priority
The researchers say the fight against infectious diseases must become a global priority, and countries must also make outbreaks in another country their own problem. They stressed that rich countries must share vaccine doses with poor countries before the virus spreads halfway around the world to curb the spread of the virus.
Given the potential for an epidemic to lead to "economic collapse," Mr. Hotts said, countries must take the threat of the pandemic as seriously as they would terrorism, nuclear weapons and cyberattacks. "We know it's just the beginning," he said. There will be a new coronavirus. ”
At the Montefiori Neak Hospital, Chaka said he and his wife and four of their children were vaccinated against the coronavirus. He hoped that "we will return to the pre-pandemic norm", but added that "some virus outbreaks are inevitable".
A few years ago, he and his colleagues dealt with a measles outbreak that caused 312 people in Rockland County, most of them unvaccinated children — long after the World Health Organization declared the endemic spread of the virus to disappear from the United States.
The World Health Organization, in its 2000 manifesto, issued a warning: "Travelers continue to bring measles into other countries, and it sometimes spreads and triggers outbreaks among unvaccinated populations." ”
Source: Reference News Network