In the year when the new crown virus is raging, people are diagnosed every day and people leave every day. With the successful development of the COVID-19 vaccine, we finally have hope to gradually get rid of this collapse situation in 2021.
However, before the people cheered, the World Health Organization (WHO) brought another worse news, and Muyembe Tamfum, an expert on Ebola, warned that although the impact of the new crown epidemic is very serious, it is not the worst time, and in the future, "disease X" may be more deadly than the new crown virus!
Source: Daily Mail
Seeing this, people will ask: What is "Disease X"?
The concept was officially born in 2018 as a term coined by WHO experts for unknown diseases around the world. X stands for "unknown", i.e. those unknown pathogens that may cause a serious epidemic.
The reason for its formation is unclear, perhaps biological mutation, or perhaps just some kind of "accident", but it is extremely contagious and fatal, like we know HIV (AIDS), Ebola and COVID-19, so it is on the list of diseases that are likely to reach the level of international pandemic priority diseases.
Image source: WHO
The checklist is a blueprint for development to help disease officials prepare for emerging diseases in the wake of the Ebola crisis in West Africa.
This is a list of pathogens that WHO focuses on, and it is not difficult to see that the new crown (COVID-19), SARS, Ebola, Zika, etc. have all caused devastating blows to human life.
You can imagine how much threat "Disease X" poses to humanity.
On 23 December 2020, CNN reported that a female patient in Ingende, a marginal town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Africa, developed symptoms of hemorrhagic fever, that is, fever, malaise, headache and myalgia, accompanied by bleeding from the skin.
Schematic of symptoms of hemorrhagic fever
图源：Hope for Nigeria
Just looking at the symptoms doctors feel too familiar, this is what it looks like after being infected with Ebola virus! She was then tested for her blood by the National Institute of Biological Research of the Congo, but the results surprised many: she tested negative for Ebola.
In other words, she was not infected with Ebola, but an unknown pathogen with similar symptoms but never appeared, most likely belonging to "disease X", and the female patient also became patient 0. (Patient 0 is a medical term, also known as an "index case", which means the first person infected by the virus when it spreads.)
Image source CNN
According to medical research, the spread of "disease X" may be as fast as the new crown virus, and what is more frightening is that its mortality rate is as high as 50% to 90%.
You know, as of the report sister's post, the number of deaths from the new crown epidemic worldwide is 1.8 million+, and if the female patient is finally diagnosed with "disease X", it is likely to cause tens of millions of deaths like the Spanish flu in 1918 (the world's total population was 1.7 billion at that time).
Image source CDC
Although these are only hypotheses, it is not that the experts are alarmist, but that they are a "fear" of real scientific data after countless similar events. When it happens, it will be a devastating blow to Africa and the world.
In an interview with CNN, Professor Muyembe also expressed support for this conclusion: "We are in a world where new pathogens are about to emerge, which is a great threat to humanity. ”
Even Dadin Bonkole, the attending physician for the female patient, was cautious: "Both Ebola and COVID-19 were what we call 'disease X' before the pathogen was found, and we must be vigilant against this new disease." ”
Now, to ensure safety, the infected woman has been admitted to an isolation observation room under the arrangements of the local government, and more examinations will be carried out in the future.
Now, some scientists have developed a strategic early warning system under the leadership of Professor Muyembe, because we are not only facing this unknown "disease X".
Professor Muyembe said that there are still many unknown pathogens lurking in the tropical rainforests of Africa, which will pose a huge threat to human beings. In addition to these, there will be more zoonotic diseases (diseases transmitted from animals to humans) in the future.
Yellow fever, various forms of influenza, rabies, brucellosis and Lyme disease are all diseases transmitted from animals to humans, usually through vectors such as rodents or insects.
We mentioned that AIDS, SARS, and MERS are all viruses that spread from an animal host to humans, and some even cause plague around the world, like an invisible chain that brings the virus in an animal in Africa to an unknown country.
Image source: Knowledge Project
It is no one else who connects this chain, but human beings' own predation of wild animals and the destruction of the ecological environment.
Because of the backward economic development, the lack of food, and the lack of basic protein and other nutrients on the local table, they set their sights on the animals in the jungle.
Local villagers hunt in the forest
Source: Reuters
Monkeys, chimpanzees and other wildlife are the congo basin's main export commodities, with up to 5 million tons of wild meat flowing out of the country each year and even becoming a major source of income there.
At the local game market, shopkeepers can often be seen waving smoked animals to sell, and the colobus monkey, which is listed as an internationally protected animal, can bargain for as little as $22 there.
A roadside restaurant sells monkey meat
Image source: Getty Pictures
The little primates that were originally alive and jumping around were now just charred corpses, and some even showed terrible teeth.
The Congolese government's crackdown on wild game markets is only a drizzle for hunters. In addition to the locals, the market has even developed abroad, and in the face of the gradual extinction of the colobus monkeys, there are shopkeepers who pat their chests to ensure that they can export more than a dozen monkeys to Europe by plane.
"To be honest, this monkey is indeed contraband. So I had to look down at their heads and limbs and mix them in other meats. ”
Even crocodiles, lizards and pangolins can't escape the killing, and every Friday, thousands of people gather at congo's Mbandaka market to buy game. On the cutting board, the table is full of carcasses of animals such as crocodiles and lizards.
Indiscriminate killings are not without retribution, and the outbreak of Ebola is the most obvious lesson for the past.
This outbreak from 2014 to 2020 is still prevalent, and there have been 11 outbreaks in 6 years.
From the countryside in remote areas to most of Africa' countries and regions, even the capital is not spared. As of 2016, in West Africa alone, 11,300 people died because of the Ebola outbreak, the total number of deaths in other regions, and the economic loss was as high as $56 billion.
Poor medical resources can only make many local people wait for death, and the scene of refusing to accept patients and patients dying at the entrance of the hospital can be seen everywhere.
A person who died of Ebola was still on a street in Liberia
Image source Associated Press
After people die, the Ebola virus stays on the corpse for 7 days, and in order to prevent more people from being infected, the dead are cremated. A large pile of burned slag ashes was placed directly in the barrel, and it was impossible to tell who was who.
All kinds of tragic conditions were born because of the local people's predation on bats.
High-energy warning, click the blank to view ▼
Image source: BBC
In addition to the predation of wild game, the large-scale destruction of ecology by humans will also lead to the accelerated spread of the epidemic.
In recent years, Congo's ecosystem has been destroyed on a large scale, and the massive deforestation of human beings has made many animals lose their habitat, and smaller animals such as rats and bats have directly entered human living areas, accelerating the spread of diseases.
Africa's Congo Basin is the second largest tropical rainforest in the world, with much of the damage caused by local farmers and 84 percent of its economic resources dependent on deforestation.
Source: CNN
From 2000 to 2010, Congo lost a total of 3,711,800 hectares (14,331 square miles) of forest.
In 1999
2008 Effects of Landsat on the Congolese Rainforest
There, there is a valuable endangered plant - African blood sandalwood, this tree after being cut down will bleed like sap, so commonly known as "blood sandalwood".
This raw material has become the new darling of the furniture market, and many high society will have blood sandalwood furniture as a status symbol. Driven by interests, many local villagers joined the logging team, and in just one day, a dozen people could fill a bus of cut sandalwood, and their salaries were only $5 a day.
The tree grows very slowly, taking more than 90 years to mature, and since 2013, the sandalwood has been large-scale logged down in Congo, but there is no official data yet showing how much it has been cut down and exported.
Image source BBC
Slashing, burning, and the destruction of this virgin land by humans has left countless wild animals without refuge and exposed to open land. From the moment people entered the forest with a predatory mentality, the ecology there was changed.
The home is gone, and the animals can only go to the human village to find living space... The two ecosystems, which were originally incompatible, also began to overlap, and the virus also came to the circle of human life with the fall of the forest.
Looking at the forest torn apart by machetes, you can instantly understand why the disease spreads rapidly. The same creatures that live on the earth, what right do humans have to deprive other species of living space? What fell down was not only a tree, but also the home of countless lives.
It is said that 2020 has opened Up Hardmode and is a "year of disaster".
But from HIV, the outbreak of Iebola, the new crown, to the emergence of "disease X", this "Pandora's box" is opened by human beings themselves...
Humans have conquered the planet as masters, upsetting the original balance, and even inadvertently "creating" viruses that did not exist before.
Who knows what humanity will face in the future, but everything that happens in 2020 is already constantly reminding humanity that it is time to reflect...
If humans continue to destroy wildlife habitats, more infectious diseases will emerge, and it's only a matter of time before it all comes.
The solution is simple: protecting forests protects humanity, and Mother Nature's armory contains lethal weapons.