Speaker 1: My name is Mierica and I've been a vetinary systant
Speaker 1: for almost four years and I'm currently in the middle
Speaker 1: of completing my Veternary Technician diploma. I work in Vancouver, BC, Canada,
Speaker 1: and have been working throughout the COVID nineteen pandemic along
Speaker 1: with everyone else in the field, as we redeemed an
Speaker 1: essential service. As a vetinary assistant, I am exposed to
Speaker 1: stress and trauma on a daily basis. I witness pain
Speaker 1: and suffering of both animals and their owners, and I
Speaker 1: am often holding animals as they take those hard final breaths.
Speaker 1: It's not all puppies and kittens. Clients are stressed and anxious,
Speaker 1: and they often take it out on the staff. Throughout COVID,
Speaker 1: we have implemented a client free policy and only allow
Speaker 1: patients into and out of the building. While this helps
Speaker 1: keep us safe, it also poses a bunch of logistical obstacles.
Speaker 1: We went from normal practice to a brand new way
Speaker 1: of operation we have never had to do before. Overnight.
Speaker 1: We split our staff into two teams and spent the
Speaker 1: next nine months working short staffed. Clients were angry they
Speaker 1: could no longer come inside with their beloved pets and
Speaker 1: many thought we were over exaggerating this COVID thing. I
Speaker 1: personally was working one month on overnights and one month
Speaker 1: off overnights for months on end, and I was exhausted.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes I was on my own and having to deal
Speaker 1: with an angry client as well as sick patients. Veterinary
Speaker 1: medicine is hard even in the best of times. Veterinary
Speaker 1: medical professionals are three times more likely to commit suicide
Speaker 1: than the average person. Many of us are on anti
Speaker 1: anxiety or depression medication, I being one of them, and
Speaker 1: work eleven plus hour days with little to no breaks
Speaker 1: even to go to the bathroom. COVID has only made
Speaker 1: things worse. Along with the pressures that COVID has placed
Speaker 1: on our profession, there is often a lot of moral
Speaker 1: pressure as well. When clients have low funds, they expect
Speaker 1: us to do things for free. If we don't, we're
Speaker 1: seen as monsters who are in it for the money,
Speaker 1: because aren't we supposed to be helping sick animals. Anyone
Speaker 1: who works in vet med will tell you that nobody
Speaker 1: goes into this profession for the money. While we get
Speaker 1: into this work because we love it, we also have
Speaker 1: bills to pay and families to support. Especially here, Vancouver
Speaker 1: is the most expensive city in Canada to live in,
Speaker 1: with the average one bedroom apartment costing two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a month. During COVID we have been the busiest we've
Speaker 1: ever been. We've had to stop accepting new clients as
Speaker 1: we just don't have the capacity to take on anymore.
Speaker 1: For a while, we had an average weight of three
Speaker 1: months for a surgical procedure and two weeks for an appointment,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a
Speaker 1: very long time in veterinary medicine. With the incredible upsurge
Speaker 1: impet adoptions while people work from home due to COVID,
Speaker 1: emergency and general practices alike were overwhelmed in veterinary medicine.
Speaker 1: We are all worried about what will happen once people
Speaker 1: are back to work. We all expect animal abandonment to
Speaker 1: skyrocket as people realize that they're now nine month old
Speaker 1: German shepherd cross has horrible separation anxiety because its owners
Speaker 1: we're home all the time, and now when they leave
Speaker 1: for work, it destroys their apartment and they can't handle
Speaker 1: it anymore.
Speaker 2: While we are.
Speaker 1: Lucky to be able to put social distancing measures in
Speaker 1: place to keep clients and staff safe. We are not
Speaker 1: immune to COVID transmission. We are all exhausted physically, emotionally,
Speaker 1: and mentally. I'm tired of being verbally abused by clients
Speaker 1: for charging for our time as if it's not valuable.
Speaker 1: I'm tired of hearing that I'm only in it for
Speaker 1: the money as I stay late to comfort a pet
Speaker 1: who is in critical care. I'm tired of being told
Speaker 1: that I'm a bad person for needing to pay my bills.
Speaker 1: Please be kind to your veterinary staff. We are all suffering,
Speaker 1: and I promise you we understand your frustration. We deserve
Speaker 1: to be treated with dignity and respect. And if you're
Speaker 1: a veterinary worker, I see you, I understand your struggle,
Speaker 1: and you're not alone. If you need help, please reach
Speaker 1: out to somebody. Thank you.
Speaker 3: My name is A d I'm a volunteer EMT in Israel.
Speaker 3: I've been volunteering for the last four years and I've
Speaker 3: been volunteering even more during COVID. I've got to see
Speaker 3: some very unusual cases during this crisis, whether people who
Speaker 3: had to go to the hospital but refused due to
Speaker 3: fear of COVID, or people who had COVID but other
Speaker 3: medical conditions and refuse to leave because they couldn't be
Speaker 3: accepted into the regular ward instead of the COVID unit.
Speaker 3: I've got to go with pregnancies that had to be
Speaker 3: taken to the COVID unit, or just sit in people's
Speaker 3: houses for an hour, just giving them the company they
Speaker 3: need and providing them a mental relief because they couldn't
Speaker 3: leave the house. I've been called to so many elderly
Speaker 3: people just so they could have a social interaction, or
Speaker 3: I've taken elderly people to a mental ward just so
Speaker 3: they could have the help they need. When the vaccine came,
Speaker 3: I was actually very happy, thankfully. I got my first
Speaker 3: vaccine dose at the end of December last year when
Speaker 3: they just started coming out. I am happy that the
Speaker 3: vaccines are out, and I am happy that my family
Speaker 3: took it, and I am happy that I'm managed to
Speaker 3: get friends to take the vaccine. I would love to
Speaker 3: see situation and ambulances and go back to normal and
Speaker 3: people actually having social interactions because I've seen the mental
Speaker 3: and physical devastation that it causes. People dying due to
Speaker 3: heart issues that could have been easily solved if they've
Speaker 3: just gone to the er with us, or people who
Speaker 3: just died of loneliness, which is something that should have
Speaker 3: been taken more care of.
Speaker 4: Hello. I'm Sarah. I'm fifty one. I live in Herefordshire
Speaker 4: in the UK with my fiance and I'm a grower
Speaker 4: supervisor for a medium sized wholesale horticultural company growing thousands
Speaker 4: of potted ornamental plants. When the lockdown came, our general
Speaker 4: manager was all over it. He found work for the
Speaker 4: seasonal staff we weren't going to keep at a local
Speaker 4: food factory and everyone who could be spared was furloughed.
Speaker 4: In the UK, the government covered eighty percent of the
Speaker 4: furloughed wages, including my fiancee who works in the loading bay.
Speaker 4: My department cares for the plants, so obviously we couldn't
Speaker 4: be furloughed. We expected business to drop through the floor.
Speaker 4: It wasn't a walk in the park. But what we
Speaker 4: didn't expect was that the moment people were forced to
Speaker 4: stay indoors, they became desperate for plants to bring nature
Speaker 4: into their homes. Garden centers were closed, but supermarkets increased
Speaker 4: their orders. My fiance was brought out a furlough after
Speaker 4: only three weeks and worked twelve hour days until we
Speaker 4: got our seasonal staff back in May. It was exhausting.
Speaker 4: Working during a national lockdown is strange. It's like going
Speaker 4: to work in the apocalypse. Then you go home with
Speaker 4: only enough energy to browse social media and no one
Speaker 4: has the same experience as you. Suddenly you have nothing
Speaker 4: in common with longtime friends. The one time I tried
Speaker 4: to express this, I got shot down in flames for
Speaker 4: not just being grateful that I still have a job,
Speaker 4: which I am. Maybe I should add here that I'm
Speaker 4: being referred to a chronic fatigue clinic. So I may
Speaker 4: have struggled more than others, but we were all exhausted.
Speaker 4: Now we're in the second lockdown. Our wedding got canceled
Speaker 4: just fifteen days before the date, but we scheduled for March.
Speaker 4: Now we can't get ppe suits for spraying, so we
Speaker 4: may lose crops soon, on top of losing the Wales
Speaker 4: in Scotland markets because they're lockdown. Horticulture has been previously
Speaker 4: treated like a poor cousin. Our general manager's daughter was
Speaker 4: told that she was too intelligent to go into horticulture.
Speaker 4: For the record, by training, I'm a horticultural research scientist.
Speaker 4: I have a research master's. Maybe now we'll be less
Speaker 4: overlooked by schools and colleges as viable careers we're hiring
Speaker 4: and any field you might be interested in, from the
Speaker 4: grunt work through to logistics, through to science, it all
Speaker 4: has its place. More than that, I hope people remember
Speaker 4: just how much they needed nature during this time.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you again so so much for sharing
Speaker 5: your stories with us.
Speaker 6: And thank you to everyone who has written in to
Speaker 6: share your COVID nineteen experience with us.
Speaker 2: We really appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we do. Hi, I'm erin Welsh and I'm erin
Speaker 7: Alman Updike and this is this podcast will kill.
Speaker 6: You And Welcome to chapter eighteen of our Anatomy of
Speaker 6: a Pandemic series.
Speaker 7: Welcome. I can't believe we've made it this far, but
Speaker 7: also I can totally believe.
Speaker 2: I know same, I feel the same.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we are very excited for this episode because it's
Speaker 7: kind of a continuation of an earlier episode.
Speaker 6: We had an episode fairly early on in this series
Speaker 6: that was all about spillover events where we spoke with
Speaker 6: doctor John and Mazette from the One Health Institute about
Speaker 6: the search for emerging viruses, the interface between wildlife, the environment,
Speaker 6: and human health, and her work with the Predict Project,
Speaker 6: which focused on detecting viruses of pandemic potential.
Speaker 2: It was a great episode.
Speaker 7: It was really great. I loved it. And today we're
Speaker 7: talking about similar topics but with a different view. What
Speaker 7: have we learned now that we're over a year into
Speaker 7: a global pandemic about how exactly this virus spilled over
Speaker 7: and how has it changed the way that we think
Speaker 7: about the potential for future pandemics and how we prepare
Speaker 7: for them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's going to be a good one. But first,
Speaker 6: of course, we have very important business to attend to.
Speaker 7: What time is it?
Speaker 6: It's quarantiney time.
Speaker 7: Wonderful. What are we drinking this week?
Speaker 6: Of course, Aaron, We're drinking Quarantiny eighteen. Well that makes sense,
Speaker 6: which has apple brandy, lemon juice, orange juice, maple syrup,
Speaker 6: some bitters, and a little bit of grated nutmeg just
Speaker 6: for you know, grading netmeg.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we're running out of different liquors or liqueurs to
Speaker 7: put in our quarantini, so.
Speaker 2: I have to get creative.
Speaker 7: We will post the full recipe for Quarantiny eighteen, as
Speaker 7: well as the non alcoholic Placybrita on our website This
Speaker 7: Podcast will kill You dot Com, as well as on
Speaker 7: all of our social media channels.
Speaker 6: Speaking of our website, have you checked it out yet?
Speaker 6: It's a pretty great website, it is.
Speaker 7: It is. We've got a lot of fun stuff on there.
Speaker 7: We of course have every reference that we ever use
Speaker 7: in any of our episodes. We've got some links to
Speaker 7: some great things like bookshop dot org, affiliate account, a
Speaker 7: Goodreads list, We've got transcripts, we've got amazing merch we've
Speaker 7: got links to all of the promo codes you hear
Speaker 7: in our ads, and we also finally set up a
Speaker 7: Patreon by popular request.
Speaker 2: So you can find all those and so much more
Speaker 2: at this Podcast will kill You dot Com.
Speaker 7: Yes, all right, let's get to the actual business now.
Speaker 6: I am really really excited for this episode. We were
Speaker 6: so fortunate to get to chat with doctor Chris Waltzer,
Speaker 6: who is the executive director of Health at the Wildlife
Speaker 6: Conservation Society.
Speaker 7: Oh my gosh, so exciting.
Speaker 6: It was such a great conversation and I honestly learned
Speaker 6: so much.
Speaker 7: Oh totally so we chatted with doctor Waltzer back on
Speaker 7: April sixth, so keep that in mind if there are
Speaker 7: any numbers discussed, and we will let him introduce himself
Speaker 7: right after this break.
Speaker 8: Hi. I'm Chris Waltz. I'm a board certified wildlife veterinarian
Speaker 8: and I'm the executive director for Health at the Wildlife
Speaker 8: Conservation Society. I work out of the Bronx in New York.
Speaker 8: We have a global conservation program in that spans some
Speaker 8: sixty countries around the globe, and my work is responsible
Speaker 8: for health aspects across those countries.
Speaker 2: Excellent.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for joining us. We're really excited
Speaker 6: to chat with you. So our first question is, we
Speaker 6: actually had an episode many months ago, close to a
Speaker 6: year ago now where we focused on spillovers and we
Speaker 6: know that sars kov two very likely spilled over into
Speaker 6: humans from an animal reservoir of some kind. But now
Speaker 6: that we are well over a year into this pandemic,
Speaker 6: what do we know about the sequence of events that
Speaker 6: led to the spillover in this pandemic? Can you kind
Speaker 6: of walk us through the timeline of those early days.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Thanks, that's a really good question because and it's
Speaker 8: really timely as well, because just a few days ago
Speaker 8: the WHO I Think Commission they were called, release their report,
Speaker 8: which also provides a really great overview of the timeline.
Speaker 8: So basically what you have in the last weeks of
Speaker 8: December twenty nineteen, you know, there was a recognition of
Speaker 8: a severe respiratory disease which we now know is COVID
Speaker 8: nineteen and I was sort of noted by Chinese health
Speaker 8: workers in the city of Wuhan, and within a few
Speaker 8: few weeks, by the time January, already the causative agent
Speaker 8: had been identified and the sequence of which was also
Speaker 8: made publicly available, which is really an extraordinarily short time.
Speaker 8: So basically, at the end of December, something news turning up.
Speaker 8: It doesn't it doesn't look like fluid influenza tests and negative,
Speaker 8: Sarus seems to be negative, and then by the tenth
Speaker 8: of January you already have a sequence for what we
Speaker 8: now know is the SARS coronavirus. Too. By looking back
Speaker 8: now at the data that the collated, for example in
Speaker 8: this WHO report, it seems very very unlikely that there
Speaker 8: was any significant circulation of this virus or at least
Speaker 8: clinical disease clinically apparent disease before November October November, there's
Speaker 8: really no data looking at mortality events or looking at
Speaker 8: clinical respiratory disease outbreaks in the city of Wuhan in
Speaker 8: May in the associated province, but you do you see
Speaker 8: very clearly from the data from the National Notifiable Disease
Speaker 8: Reporting System in China that by the end of December,
Speaker 8: the virus plus the clinical disease was definitely circulating the
Speaker 8: community within the city of Huhan, initially in the central
Speaker 8: districts and then started to spread around these outside the
Speaker 8: central districts, and then with about two weeks time delay
Speaker 8: start seeing the increase immortality and clinical events also in
Speaker 8: the province of Rubai. So the other thing that's quite
Speaker 8: interesting that we now have summary data. As you remember,
Speaker 8: back in January February, there was this very very strong
Speaker 8: signal from the Huanan seafood wholesale market. The key was
Speaker 8: that this market was selling live wildlife species. So there
Speaker 8: was seen, as in previous outbreaks like SARS, that it
Speaker 8: may be a strong link he and initially many of
Speaker 8: the cases were directly linked to that market, and then
Speaker 8: as the weeks went on, there were more and more
Speaker 8: reports well some of the cases are not linked to
Speaker 8: this market, and there was a lot of questions around
Speaker 8: what was the role of the market, if at all.
Speaker 8: What we see now though, is that in these early
Speaker 8: days people also had contacts. Some people also contact to
Speaker 8: other markets. And I find it particularly compelling that there
Speaker 8: are thirteen sequences available of saras COVID two with an
Speaker 8: onset in December, and of those thirteen, all of them
Speaker 8: had contact to a market. I think eleven of them
Speaker 8: had a contact with the jhure Non market, and then
Speaker 8: the able two to other markets. So that's a really
Speaker 8: strong signal. And we also know now from some nine
Speaker 8: hundred plus environmental samples that most of the positive samples
Speaker 8: came from this western part of the market where the
Speaker 8: wildlife was housed and traded. But we still do not
Speaker 8: know at this point in time how the spillover event
Speaker 8: actually happened. With the timing is pretty good, but what happened.
Speaker 8: Was there an intermediary species, was it the traders, Was
Speaker 8: it humans that brought the virus into the city, into
Speaker 8: the market. That's still pretty unclear at the moment. I
Speaker 8: think the two main hypothesis at the moment from the
Speaker 8: ancestral host, which is in a horseshoe bad species. And
Speaker 8: as I'm sure you've discussed previously, this virus either spilled
Speaker 8: over directly into humans with cryptic evolution, for example, in
Speaker 8: a rural area and no one noticed, and then was
Speaker 8: brought to the market where there was an amplification event,
Speaker 8: or the more likely theory, and that's the one being
Speaker 8: favored at the moment, is that it's spilled over into
Speaker 8: an intermediary host and there's a lot of those available,
Speaker 8: and then at the trading site or longer trade value chain,
Speaker 8: it came to a spiller rint to humans.
Speaker 7: Mm hmmm, that makes sense. Yeah. So people have been
Speaker 7: studying spillovers and the emergence of novel viruses for a
Speaker 7: very long time, and you know, they have been saying
Speaker 7: also for a very long time that a pandemic just
Speaker 7: like this was almost inevitable. And so knowing that, knowing
Speaker 7: that something like this was almost inevitable, where do you
Speaker 7: think that we went wrong on either a national level
Speaker 7: or an international level in terms of preparedness or control.
Speaker 8: So I think one of the most important things we've
Speaker 8: learned is that the known science has been inadequately translated
Speaker 8: for policy makers and decision makers. So this was known
Speaker 8: and we all put ourselves on what you're saying, well,
Speaker 8: this was no surprise. But what we should really be
Speaker 8: saying is if we knew this, how come we were
Speaker 8: unable to or unwilling maybe to come communicate this adequately
Speaker 8: so that decision makers policimates could prepare us better for
Speaker 8: this measure. That's sort of one aspect. I think that
Speaker 8: general aspect from science and researchers that we would need
Speaker 8: to make more efforts to translate our science findings beyond
Speaker 8: publishing it in the highest impact journal that we can find.
Speaker 8: Just having a disease x buried somewhere in some report
Speaker 8: is obviously inadequate. In this case, this is compounded by
Speaker 8: the fact I would say that humans in general, or societies,
Speaker 8: humans and societies basically are always discounting the future. We're
Speaker 8: obviously always taken by some short terms and immediate gains,
Speaker 8: and investing into the future, into the next generations, especially
Speaker 8: for events which have a low probability of happening, is
Speaker 8: something we we we always discount. So that is definitely
Speaker 8: sort of a foundational problem, and we need to get
Speaker 8: over that if we want to move forward. I mean,
Speaker 8: this is a this is a viral spill over we're
Speaker 8: talking about now, But climate change, you know, it's on
Speaker 8: the heels, so to say, I think it's here now.
Speaker 8: Plus the problem is growing every moment, and we're also
Speaker 8: discounting those effects at the moment. We still think we're
Speaker 8: going to get over it somehow. So I believe that,
Speaker 8: you know, the lack of investment, the lack of understanding
Speaker 8: of long term investments with low immediate returns of investment.
Speaker 8: I think, as I said, that's a real problem as well.
Speaker 8: But the other one is one thing we all underestimated,
Speaker 8: I'm sure, and I use this sort of a royal
Speaker 8: we all is the impacts, the broad and wide impacts
Speaker 8: that a single event is going to have on a
Speaker 8: global scale. Who would have thought that we would not
Speaker 8: have enough ppe gloves needles as a prevention measure on
Speaker 8: a global scale. And who would have known that six
Speaker 8: months later, eight months later, you still can't get spare
Speaker 8: parts for multiple products. The interconnectness of the world I
Speaker 8: think was sorely under matd. So the obvious one was
Speaker 8: that the virus was able to spread super, super quickly
Speaker 8: across the entire globe, but also the interconnectness of our
Speaker 8: economic interdependency I think was something we really underestimated.
Speaker 6: Yeah, definitely, So kind of on the flip side of that,
Speaker 6: although you know, we've done things wrong or maybe missed things,
Speaker 6: discounted things, at the same time, we've also seen over
Speaker 6: the last year massive biomedical accomplishments that have happened on
Speaker 6: a timeline we've never that's really never been possible before.
Speaker 6: So could you talk a bit about what things we
Speaker 6: did write or what things we maybe actually had prepared
Speaker 6: for quite well.
Speaker 8: So mainstreaming messenger RNA vaccines I think is one of
Speaker 8: the greatest achievements that we have managed in this past year.
Speaker 8: And generally the development and deployment of multiple vaccines within
Speaker 8: a twelve month is really extraordinary. That's absolutely extraordinary. So
Speaker 8: that's a huge gain. And remember that things like messenger
Speaker 8: RNA vaccines are not only going to help us in
Speaker 8: this present pandemic, but it's also going to help us
Speaker 8: in the future, not only for infectious disease, but generally.
Speaker 8: If we reflect based on a maybe ten thousand meter view,
Speaker 8: then one of the things that the pandemic has really done,
Speaker 8: and I think this is One of the great opportunities
Speaker 8: that we have moving forwards is the pandemic has at
Speaker 8: a great cost, of course, but has humanized the fact
Speaker 8: that destruction of our planet, destruction of our environment impacts
Speaker 8: each and every one of us. Basically, it has made
Speaker 8: it real that destruction of a habitat halfway across the
Speaker 8: globe is going to kill potentially kill my neighbor in
Speaker 8: the bronx, and that is something we've never had before.
Speaker 8: I think each and every person I meet at least
Speaker 8: has some inkling that events on the other side of
Speaker 8: the globe, in the environment have potential to harm each
Speaker 8: and every one of us, impact our well being, our
Speaker 8: economic security, and in the end our lives. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, So just to play with hypotheticals a bit, You know,
Speaker 7: a pandemic is such a product of its time in
Speaker 7: both in like the policies that are in place, in
Speaker 7: terms of how interconnected the world is, and so I
Speaker 7: kind of want to dive into you know, what might
Speaker 7: this pandemic have looked like if it happened in say
Speaker 7: two thousand and three, when stars happened, so instead of
Speaker 7: like sars kov one, what might have happened if it
Speaker 7: was actually SARS Kobe two in two thousand and three.
Speaker 7: Are there ways in which we've made scientific progress that
Speaker 7: might have changed the pandemic, either for the worse or
Speaker 7: for the better. But in any case, how do you
Speaker 7: think it might have played out differently than it could have,
Speaker 7: let's say, twenty years ago.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so obviously this is very hypothetical to think about
Speaker 8: how it would have played out, but based only what
Speaker 8: we know from SARS back in two thousand and two,
Speaker 8: two thousand and threes, one of the biggest differences the
Speaker 8: interconnectness of the world. Amount of people moving around the
Speaker 8: globe has just increased exponentially, so that enabled the virus
Speaker 8: to spread very very quickly. There was obviously, you know,
Speaker 8: bad luck around the New year as well, there was
Speaker 8: going to be more people traveling anyway, all that to
Speaker 8: be said, it's just there are so many more people traveling.
Speaker 8: So I think that's that's the biggest difference. On the
Speaker 8: flip side, of course, if you remember that, I think
Speaker 8: we were a year and a half into SARS before
Speaker 8: we knew what the virus was, and certainly it took
Speaker 8: a long time to even establish that it had a
Speaker 8: source in wildlife, and that now as I said, you know,
Speaker 8: it was only three weeks probably after the official recognition
Speaker 8: of the severe respiratory to zee, that we had a
Speaker 8: full sequence, had a phylogenetic tree that showed that the
Speaker 8: sequence was very close to BAT sequences and so on.
Speaker 8: So that's changed a lot, interestingly from the therapeutic side,
Speaker 8: And while that is certainly not my expertise, there's not
Speaker 8: that much new at least is what I can see
Speaker 8: from the literature. You know, the mainstay, a good old
Speaker 8: veterinary drug that we use widely for respiratory disease when
Speaker 8: it gets dire dexa metasone is still you know, it
Speaker 8: was a mainstay halfway through this pandemic. And then, as
Speaker 8: I pointed out before, of course what's new as well
Speaker 8: is that we have a vaccine in one year. Remember
Speaker 8: the SARS vaccine development basically petered out after you know,
Speaker 8: a decade of no cases of SARS. So I think
Speaker 8: that's sort of my take of what would have been different.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So kind of going back to something you were
Speaker 6: talking on earlier today about the kind of large scale
Speaker 6: coal markets that sell and trade in wildlife. These type
Speaker 6: of markets have been implicated not just in this pandemic,
Speaker 6: but like you said, in other large epidemics before this,
Speaker 6: and so they've kind of gotten a lot of press,
Speaker 6: which has led to some controversies, with some people saying
Speaker 6: we should ban the wildlife trade, ban hunting on wildlife completely,
Speaker 6: and other people pushing back and saying, well, these are
Speaker 6: sources of protein for people who need it for nutrition,
Speaker 6: et cetera.
Speaker 2: But this is a much.
Speaker 6: More nuanced problem than just like to ban or not
Speaker 6: to ban. So could you talk us through some of
Speaker 6: this nuance and the interplay between these commercial wildlife markets
Speaker 6: and spillover events and wildlife hunting for subsistence purposes.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think the key point here is there is
Speaker 8: a lot of nuance and the use of wildlife for consumption.
Speaker 8: For it, there's a lot of nuance in use of
Speaker 8: wildlife generally, but let us focus on use of wildlife
Speaker 8: for human consumption, and there's a huge gradient here in
Speaker 8: Southeast Asia and China specifically. Wildlife for consumption has certain attributes.
Speaker 8: First of all, the wildlife is often sold alive, which,
Speaker 8: as you can imagine, when you sell in a large,
Speaker 8: industrial sized market where you will have hundreds of species
Speaker 8: potentially mixing with the consumers, but also with domestic livestock
Speaker 8: and poultry, these are provides a really dynamic and very
Speaker 8: very dangerous interface for virus exchange, so that's quite special.
Speaker 8: Though in Southeast Asia and China, the animals are alive
Speaker 8: across all of China. There is no subsistence hunting anymore.
Speaker 8: The wildlife is produced for a middle class and up
Speaker 8: and coming middle class as a luxury item, as a
Speaker 8: status symbol. The wildlife is always more expensive. So it's
Speaker 8: estimated that wildlife you know, bamboo rats and the civets
Speaker 8: and so on, costs between two and five times as
Speaker 8: much as pork of the same volume, all the same weight,
Speaker 8: so it's definitely a luxury item. It doesn't meet any
Speaker 8: dietary or nutritional needs. Now that is starkly contrasted to,
Speaker 8: for example, the use of wildlife meat in Central Africa,
Speaker 8: where there are millions of people who are absolutely dependent
Speaker 8: on having access to wildlife meat to meet there are
Speaker 8: simple nutritional needs and you know that's protein and also
Speaker 8: micronutrient needs. They need that access because there are absolutely
Speaker 8: no alternatives now the way these two markets, and you know,
Speaker 8: similar markets are in Latin America and other parts of
Speaker 8: Asia as well. But taking these two is the extreme.
Speaker 8: As you're hunt out the forests in let's say Central Africa,
Speaker 8: part of that meat is being used in large cities
Speaker 8: where there is no longer a nutritional need. Some of
Speaker 8: it is being shipped across the globe to end up
Speaker 8: in markets in Asia. And so what you're doing with
Speaker 8: the commercial trade of wildlife for consumption is that you're
Speaker 8: actually depriving the people who need it the most, which
Speaker 8: is mostly indigenous peoples and local communities of that resource
Speaker 8: which is so important to them. So the two are interconnected,
Speaker 8: and the bands on the curbing of wildlife for human
Speaker 8: consumption from our point of view, from the point of
Speaker 8: view of the wildlife conservation society, focuses very very strongly
Speaker 8: on the urban commercial wildlife markets, while at the same
Speaker 8: time recognizing and supporting indigenous peoples in local communities and
Speaker 8: their need and their right to access wildlife meet So
Speaker 8: it's not complicated, but it's very nuanced and it does
Speaker 8: require a clear understanding of the dynamics in different contexts. Now,
Speaker 8: as I pointed out, the fact that the animals are
Speaker 8: alive is definitely the biggest risk. Once the animal has
Speaker 8: been killed, and smoked and processed in any way, the
Speaker 8: risk drops by orders of magnitude. Of course, once it's
Speaker 8: been cooked, there's no worry there at all. But with
Speaker 8: the life wildlife trade you do have this issue that
Speaker 8: as the animal moves along the trade value chain from
Speaker 8: its side of capture or the farm where it's being produced,
Speaker 8: to the market or the kitchen in the restaurant, the
Speaker 8: prevalence or the positivity rate to a specific pathogen actually increases.
Speaker 8: So we've been able to show that for field rats,
Speaker 8: for example, along the trade value chain in Vietnam, at
Speaker 8: the field site where it's captured or bred, it's only
Speaker 8: every fifth rat which would be positive for coronavirus. By
Speaker 8: the time he gets to the kitchen in the restaurant
Speaker 8: in an urban setting, every second one of those rights
Speaker 8: is coronavirus positive. And the sad thing is this has
Speaker 8: already been shown back in two thousand and four for civets.
Speaker 8: Civets and farms in China had practically no amptibodies to SARS,
Speaker 8: but by the time they'd reached the market site, I
Speaker 8: think eighty percent of them were positive for SARS. So
Speaker 8: this concentration and amplification along the market value chain is
Speaker 8: something that's really really important to consider.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that makes sense, and so kind of going along
Speaker 7: with this discussion of wildlife, hunting and biodiversity and interconnectedness,
Speaker 7: can you talk a little bit about the measures that
Speaker 7: we have in place to prevent spillover events and or
Speaker 7: maybe just prevent spillover events from turning into another pandemic,
Speaker 7: And can you discuss that sort of in the context
Speaker 7: of wildlife and forest conservation. How do those things fit
Speaker 7: into this equation of spillover events and pandemic control.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so when we talk about pandemic control, I think
Speaker 8: it's also important we want to prevent epidemics as well.
Speaker 8: We don't always have to go all the way full
Speaker 8: blown full Monty pandemic, but epidemics as well is somewhat
Speaker 8: to prevent. Now it's the most important concept. We're so
Speaker 8: focused now on the market because this is obviously this
Speaker 8: is an interface that is a particular concern to us,
Speaker 8: but on a much more basic level, it's all about interfaces.
Speaker 8: Seventy five percent of all emerging infectious disease have their
Speaker 8: origin wildlife, So it's about this contact, these interfaces between
Speaker 8: wildlife and their habitat and humans. And the more contact
Speaker 8: we allow or enable on these contact areas, the greater
Speaker 8: the chance that one of the spillover events is going
Speaker 8: to be successful. So you have a compartment that's wildlife
Speaker 8: in an intact habitat, a lot of different species, one
Speaker 8: hundred thousands of viruses which are being shared, and the
Speaker 8: animals are not sick. They're just the reservoirs. It doesn't
Speaker 8: bother anyone. You put a road into that compartment, or
Speaker 8: you put a road alongside there, you're starting to DeForest
Speaker 8: and you're trying to bring out the logs right and
Speaker 8: the left of that road. You have created an interface
Speaker 8: with the formerly intact forest, and along that interface there's
Speaker 8: going to be incoursions. People will go into the forest,
Speaker 8: they will hunt there. They need to go hunt. They'll
Speaker 8: be trapping animals, they're getting fire wood, and within a
Speaker 8: few hundred meters there will be repeated contacts with wildlife.
Speaker 8: They will return to the road and then they will
Speaker 8: try to sell surplus wildlife. That animal will then move
Speaker 8: down the road and can be consumed and used. And
Speaker 8: as you can imagine, that is a possibility for a
Speaker 8: spillover event to occur. Now, these spill over events are
Speaker 8: happening all the time. Viruses are spilling over constantly. The
Speaker 8: point being now that for the most part they do
Speaker 8: not cause disease. They are not able to replicate in
Speaker 8: human cells, and they certainly aren't able to transmit from
Speaker 8: human to human. But the more opportunities you provide at
Speaker 8: these interphases, it's like a numbers games. The more opportunities
Speaker 8: you provide, the greater the chance that eventually one virus
Speaker 8: is going to make it across the multiple barriers that
Speaker 8: stop that naturally. So these would be interphase. It's in
Speaker 8: forests and at the edges of growing industrial expansion where
Speaker 8: you have cattle pastures. Those are the classic interfaces. But
Speaker 8: then we as humans, of course, we're particularly good at this.
Speaker 8: So what we do is we'll go in the forest
Speaker 8: and catch animals from all over the globe and then
Speaker 8: bring them together in a room and a marketplace. So
Speaker 8: we create these, you know, basically super interfaces. That is
Speaker 8: probably you know, one of the worst ideas if you
Speaker 8: want to prevent spill over is to bring animals that
Speaker 8: are never to get normally into one place alive and
Speaker 8: let them exchange viruses and then add in several thousand
Speaker 8: people a day into that environment. That's just from a
Speaker 8: you know, looking at it from a risk side of things,
Speaker 8: that's just a very very bad idea. If you ask
Speaker 8: for a permit and you had a BSL four lab
Speaker 8: and you said, well, you know what I want to do.
Speaker 8: We want to get fifty species just kind of put
Speaker 8: them in there and they'll just let them poop and
Speaker 8: exchange blood and we'll see what comes out of it.
Speaker 8: And that's what we'd like to do. You never get
Speaker 8: a permit for it, but that's why you're basically doing
Speaker 8: in a market. So it's interesting that we don't consider
Speaker 8: or not we have not considered those threats adequately in
Speaker 8: the past, and no one's obviously going to pay for
Speaker 8: them now.
Speaker 6: So kind of along those lines, when we talk about
Speaker 6: you know, epidemic or pandemic preparedness and also epidemic and
Speaker 6: pandemic response, these are two very different aspects dealing with
Speaker 6: a pandemic and of course as part of the wildlife
Speaker 6: conservation society or dealing more with the pandemic preparedness and
Speaker 6: you know, identification aspect. But I wonder if you could
Speaker 6: touch a little bit about how these two different aspects
Speaker 6: really differ and maybe touch a bit on the importance
Speaker 6: of working across different sectors. We are looking at things
Speaker 6: like epidemics and pandemics.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so the one Lefe Conservation Society, as the name implies,
Speaker 8: we're a conservation organization with a very robust and long
Speaker 8: standing health program. So inherently we are working at what
Speaker 8: is perceived as the front lines of spillover. WCS is
Speaker 8: protecting forests and landscapes, especially those high biodiverse areas where
Speaker 8: we can expect and where models have shown that spillover
Speaker 8: is going to be more likely. So the first sort
Speaker 8: of say barrier against spillover and the next pandemic is
Speaker 8: recognizing when spillover does happen at a very very early stage,
Speaker 8: and even more importantly is of course preventing spillover to
Speaker 8: happen at all. So it is well known and has
Speaker 8: been documented in numerous studies that intact landscapes intact forests
Speaker 8: generally do not constitute such a threat as disturbed landscapes.
Speaker 8: Spillovers happen predominantly in disturbed landscapes, so on the edges
Speaker 8: of these intact areas. So wcs's mainstay is protecting areas
Speaker 8: and the communities that rely on them. That's the mainstay
Speaker 8: of our work. But around the edges, of course, in
Speaker 8: these edges of destruction, that's where the land is being changed,
Speaker 8: and this is the areas where we would expect future
Speaker 8: spill over events of importance to occur. And since we
Speaker 8: are already working there, we were able to sort of
Speaker 8: the eyes and boots on the ground in some of
Speaker 8: these areas where with our tools which we're using for conservation,
Speaker 8: they're easily adapted and have been adapted in these past,
Speaker 8: you know, past year to also pick up early indications
Speaker 8: of the spillover event, and that can now be prepared
Speaker 8: at you at frontline community health centers can be pared
Speaker 8: with innovative technology to get very early in diagnosis of
Speaker 8: something awry, I think, and I'm saying that on purpose,
Speaker 8: because what you want to actually notice is that there's
Speaker 8: something going on here which we cannot diagnose, but it
Speaker 8: has potential to be dangerous. Basically, it really breaks down
Speaker 8: to something very simple. When you have a febrile disease
Speaker 8: which is being transmitted in a community somewhere on the
Speaker 8: edge of a forest or a disturbed landscape, you want
Speaker 8: to be very attentive to that, so that part that
Speaker 8: pre pandemic pre spillover is really the mainstay as we
Speaker 8: move forwards, protecting landscapes, protecting our forests, protecting the environment
Speaker 8: in general, maintaining ecosystem function and biodiversity is probably one
Speaker 8: of the best investments we can make into the future
Speaker 8: and repair that with frontline and diagnostics and information networks.
Speaker 8: One of the things we've learned about working across sectors.
Speaker 8: Our organization is just inherently transsectoral, and you know governments,
Speaker 8: you would think that all the administrations and different ministries
Speaker 8: are talking to each other, are constantly and coordinating, but
Speaker 8: the reality is that's not happening. Most basic would be
Speaker 8: the agricultural sector is completely siloed from the public health sector,
Speaker 8: so spillover, for example, from wildlife to livestock and then
Speaker 8: onto humans would actually need to be addressed by different sectors.
Speaker 8: Interestingly enough, as an organization, we actually work already with
Speaker 8: both sectors, so we're often a great convener and a
Speaker 8: great place to share information and to make people aware
Speaker 8: of how these different areas are interconnected. So as we
Speaker 8: talk about frontline diagnostics and early onset sort of diagnostics,
Speaker 8: We also need to make sure that that information is
Speaker 8: made available into the existing public health networks, and that
Speaker 8: is really a challenge at the moment we need to
Speaker 8: address as we move forward. We really need to find
Speaker 8: out how to streamline that information and how to use
Speaker 8: that information. It's not that simple.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we know that this isn't going to be the
Speaker 6: last pandemic or the last epidemic that we see, unfortunately.
Speaker 6: So this is kind of a multi part question. But
Speaker 6: what are people like you, people who work in this field,
Speaker 6: most concerned about when it comes to the next potential
Speaker 6: pandemic And what are the areas that you feel we
Speaker 6: still have really big improvements to make either and how
Speaker 6: we prepare for or how we predict and try and
Speaker 6: prevent pandemics like this.
Speaker 8: I think one of the I believe one of the
Speaker 8: things we really need to address is the siloed structure
Speaker 8: of our governments and decision processes. We definitely if we
Speaker 8: want to address future pandemics and epidemics, we need what
Speaker 8: is called a one health approach, And so one health
Speaker 8: approach is an approach that does acknowledge that the health
Speaker 8: of humans, the health of animals, plants, and the environment
Speaker 8: are all entangled and interconnected, and by trying to only
Speaker 8: deal with one pillar, you will never be able to
Speaker 8: address these complex issues, as a pandemic has shown, so
Speaker 8: a one health framing, this kind of framing is essential,
Speaker 8: and I am seeing that across the globe as governments
Speaker 8: and administrations and multilaterals are scrambling to see how they're
Speaker 8: going to be able to implement that. So there's a
Speaker 8: broad realization that this is necessary. That great thing. On
Speaker 8: the other hand, we do have a problem that we're obviously,
Speaker 8: I mean calling it a problem is really an understatement.
Speaker 8: We do have this issue that we're talking about unknowns.
Speaker 8: As you will see in the media and in discussions,
Speaker 8: there's always this talk about zoonosis in the sense that
Speaker 8: the classic description we have an animal reservoir and pathogens
Speaker 8: spill over, known pathogens spill over into humans. But what
Speaker 8: we're dealing with with these pandemics is what are actually
Speaker 8: just zoonotic origin potential pathogens they spill over and then
Speaker 8: they don't need that animal reservoir at all anymore because
Speaker 8: they've got into the best host there is out there
Speaker 8: with nearly eight billion humans, So these zoonotic origin is
Speaker 8: just a small point in time and then all subsequent
Speaker 8: evolution and spread happens in humans, and to recognize which
Speaker 8: virus is going to become a pathogen of importance, it's
Speaker 8: a very very difficult process at the moment. So I
Speaker 8: always say, if we had described SARS coronavirus to mid
Speaker 8: twenty nineteen from one of the species we call in
Speaker 8: Southeast Asia, probably wouldn't even have published the paper. I mean,
Speaker 8: it wouldn't have surprised anyone to find something. It would
Speaker 8: have maybe been interesting because it was so closely related
Speaker 8: to SARS, but it would have just been another one.
Speaker 8: So how do we characterize these discovered pathogens quickly enough
Speaker 8: or these potential pathogens quickly enough that they can actually
Speaker 8: inform policy and decision makers. So that's going to be
Speaker 8: a tricky discussion and process in the next you know,
Speaker 8: hopefully shorter them later, But that's something we definitely need
Speaker 8: to work on. A lot of is own about sell entry
Speaker 8: and replication in human sales and transmission, But how do
Speaker 8: you process that information, which is often you know, basic
Speaker 8: research in labs so that it can actually inform policy
Speaker 8: and decisions. So I think that's one of the really
Speaker 8: big challenges moving forward. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, So the pandemic has changed a lot of our
Speaker 7: daily lives, both from a big picture in terms of
Speaker 7: how we understand spillover events to you know how it's
Speaker 7: a you know, day to day change, maybe working from home,
Speaker 7: or saving a lot on gas this year, or doing
Speaker 7: grocery pickup, and so our last question kind of focuses
Speaker 7: on it's a more personal question. So what do you
Speaker 7: hope that we keep or learn from this pandemic, either
Speaker 7: something personal to you or maybe as a society.
Speaker 8: I think my main wish will be that we don't
Speaker 8: go back to where we were before. That's I think
Speaker 8: very very important. The pandemic has provided some extraordinary opportunities
Speaker 8: to make our world and our society is a better place.
Speaker 8: The pandemic, of course, isn't alone. The pandemic comes together
Speaker 8: with biodiversity loss, with climate change, global crisis, in inequities
Speaker 8: and injustice, and now this health crisis, so we have
Speaker 8: multiple crisis going on. They all are symptoms of an
Speaker 8: ailing planet. And I think the pandemic, because it has
Speaker 8: impacted the well being and the health each and every
Speaker 8: family across the globe, makes it more tangible that the
Speaker 8: planet is ailing. So I do believe that it's going
Speaker 8: to provide an opportunity for us to have a more
Speaker 8: respectful and humble approach to our planet.
Speaker 7: That was so great. Thank you so much, doctor Walter
Speaker 7: for taking the time to chat with us about spillover
Speaker 7: and conservation and viruses and policy and everything like all.
Speaker 2: The things we love to talk about.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly. And I also want to give a shout
Speaker 7: out to nat for helping us set everything up. That
Speaker 7: was so helpful.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Impossible without you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 7: All Right, should we go over the top five things
Speaker 7: that we want to take away from the interview?
Speaker 2: I think we should erin.
Speaker 6: You want to start us off, I will, all right.
Speaker 7: Number one, so we know now from retrospective analysis that
Speaker 7: the SARS covy two virus didn't likely emerge until November
Speaker 7: twenty nineteen, or perhaps at the very end of October
Speaker 7: of that same year. And it was December twenty nineteen
Speaker 7: when it was first noticed that a new to US
Speaker 7: unidentified virus was causing a febrile illness in Wuhan in China,
Speaker 7: and by January tenth that virus had been sequenced, which
Speaker 7: is like amazingly fast, still so fast, and today, we
Speaker 7: still don't know the exact sequence of events or the
Speaker 7: precise spillover event or events that took place that led
Speaker 7: to this new virus emergence, but we do know that
Speaker 7: the ancestral host of SARS Kobe two was likely a bat,
Speaker 7: But we can't pinpoint yet whether this virus spilled directly
Speaker 7: over from bats into humans or whether there was an
Speaker 7: intermediate host involved, which is probably more likely because that
Speaker 7: has been the case with other coronavirus epidemics. But one
Speaker 7: thing is certain, and that is that it's very likely
Speaker 7: that large scale wildlife markets where live wildlife are housed
Speaker 7: and sold, such as the seafood market in Muhan and
Speaker 7: others nearby, that these markets likely played an integral role
Speaker 7: in the emergence of this particular virus.
Speaker 2: Number two.
Speaker 6: We often see scientific developments inadequately translated into something policymakers
Speaker 6: can actually use to develop and implement public health policies.
Speaker 6: This may be in large part due to issues in communication,
Speaker 6: which of course we've touched on in every single one
Speaker 6: of our COVID episodes, but it also has to do
Speaker 6: with the fact that as humans, we are always discounting
Speaker 6: the future.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Yeah, especially when.
Speaker 6: That potential future has a low probability of happening, like
Speaker 6: spillover events turning into global pandemics. For example, we have
Speaker 6: known about spillover events and the scenarios in which they
Speaker 6: tend to occur. We have seen epidemics unfold countless times before,
Speaker 6: yet we still underestimate the potential impacts of a pandemic
Speaker 6: on a global scale.
Speaker 2: And the thing is, it's not.
Speaker 6: Just translating between scientists and decision makers, or even scientists
Speaker 6: and the general public. It's even getting information to flow
Speaker 6: smoothly between different sectors of government and these different agencies
Speaker 6: that actually make public policy. Often these different groups work
Speaker 6: with entirely different sets of information, which makes making collective,
Speaker 6: large scale decision making really difficult, if not almost impossible.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, number three. In some ways, this pandemic has
Speaker 7: brought to the forefront the fact that events that degrade
Speaker 7: or affect the environment thousands of miles away from where
Speaker 7: you are have the ability to directly affect our lives
Speaker 7: and our economies and our health. Not only does global
Speaker 7: travel make it possible for someone to be on three
Speaker 7: different continents in a span of twenty four hours, and
Speaker 7: during that time, they've been able to interact with thousands
Speaker 7: of other humans. Over the past year, we've also seen
Speaker 7: the impact of globalization in so many other ways, everything
Speaker 7: from not having enough ppe or testing equipment, or in
Speaker 7: terms of vaccine development, like we're still seeing supply chain difficulties,
Speaker 7: and even outside the realm of healthcare, we're seeing supply
Speaker 7: chain difficulties. Remember the toilet paper. This interconnectedness that we
Speaker 7: often underestimate has been impossible to ignore during this pandemic.
Speaker 7: And while this interconnectedness is the exact thing that allows
Speaker 7: pandemics like COVID nineteen to flourish, it also has a
Speaker 7: flip side because it's the same global network that has
Speaker 7: led to scientific progress, allowing us to identify and sequence
Speaker 7: this virus, trace its origin, and develop tests within a
Speaker 7: matter of weeks after its emergence. Despite how much havoc
Speaker 7: this pandemic has reaked, we have achieved a hecka a
Speaker 7: lot amazing new vaccine technologies have been tested, scaled up,
Speaker 7: and deployed all around the globe in record time.
Speaker 2: Number four.
Speaker 6: Speaking of scientific advancements, we have the technology to detect
Speaker 6: novel viruses and people have been working for decades identifying
Speaker 6: these new viruses in wildlife, But how do we characterize
Speaker 6: and decide where to put our funding to know which
Speaker 6: ones would really have pandemic potential. That is still a
Speaker 6: really big challenge. It's theoretically possible that some one could
Speaker 6: have found or identified a very similar virus to SARS
Speaker 6: CoV two in its original host, but couldn't have predicted
Speaker 6: that it would then cause this pandemic.
Speaker 2: We need new tools.
Speaker 6: To be able to process this massive amount of information,
Speaker 6: not only to identify these pathogens early, but this also
Speaker 6: then has to be paired with working with community health centers,
Speaker 6: with people who develop diagnostic tools to be able to
Speaker 6: identify on the ground in humans when things are awry
Speaker 6: or when risks pop up, and then those networks have
Speaker 6: to also be paired with larger information networks to share
Speaker 6: this data across the globe and then translate it to policymakers.
Speaker 2: And on and on and on.
Speaker 6: Pandemic preparedness really has to be very transsectoral work for
Speaker 6: it to be effective. What we need is a one
Speaker 6: health approach which acknowledges that animal, human, and environmental health
Speaker 6: are all very interconnected and we have to address all
Speaker 6: of them, not just piecemeal, but all together to ensure
Speaker 6: that the planet and us humans living on it actually
Speaker 6: are healthy. The good news is that this is starting
Speaker 6: to happen. This pandemic has I think led to a
Speaker 6: broad realization that this approach really is vital going forward.
Speaker 6: But like we said, even in an earlier learning point,
Speaker 6: getting all of these different sectors to talk to one
Speaker 6: another is still a challenge.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Number five, conservation is an integral part of pandemic prevention. Yeah,
Speaker 7: conserve the forests, conserve the planet, conserve wildlife, and we
Speaker 7: will likely incredibly reduce the potential for a pathogen to
Speaker 7: spill over and cause another pandemic or epidemic. Seventy five
Speaker 7: percent of all emerging infectious diseases have their origin in wildlife,
Speaker 7: but not every spillover event results in a global pandemic
Speaker 7: or even an epidemic. Viruses are constantly spilling over, but
Speaker 7: for the most part, they don't lead to epidemics or
Speaker 7: pandemics because they don't cause disease in humans, or if
Speaker 7: they do, they aren't transmissible from person to person. And
Speaker 7: it's not intact forest habitats that pose a threat, it's
Speaker 7: the edges. It's those disturbed habitats. The more that we
Speaker 7: increase the number of interfaces between wildlife, their habitats, and humans,
Speaker 7: the more we're playing a numbers game. We're just increasing
Speaker 7: the chances that a spillover event can occur, and we're
Speaker 7: increasing the chances that it will be successful, as in
Speaker 7: resulting in an epidemic or pandemic. Keeping live animals in
Speaker 7: cages at large scale commercial wildlife markets is one example
Speaker 7: of a place where you're really increasing the numbers of
Speaker 7: potential contexts, and it's why urban wildlife markets pose such
Speaker 7: a great threat in terms of zoonotic disease than wildlife
Speaker 7: that is consumed by local communities for subsistence. For example,
Speaker 7: conservation of our forests not only decreases the contact between
Speaker 7: humans and wildlife, it also preserves habitat for wildlife populations
Speaker 7: in areas where people actually depend on wildlife as a
Speaker 7: food source. Doctor Waltzer said that this pandemic is one
Speaker 7: just one of the symptoms of our ailing planet. Conservation
Speaker 7: has to be one of the treatments.
Speaker 6: Oh yes, that's I think my favorite take home point.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, thank you again so much to doctor Waltzer
Speaker 6: for taking the time to chat with us, and to
Speaker 6: Nat for all of your help in getting all of
Speaker 6: this interview set up.
Speaker 7: Yes, and thank you again to everyone who has provided
Speaker 7: a first hand account in this episode, in just in
Speaker 7: our email, in filling out the form. Thank you to everyone.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we really feel very like to get to hear
Speaker 6: so many stories from you all. Thank you also to
Speaker 6: Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode and all
Speaker 6: of our episodes.
Speaker 7: And thank you to the Exactly Right Network, of whom
Speaker 7: we are a very proud member.
Speaker 2: And thank you to you listeners.
Speaker 6: We have what two more episodes of this series erin
Speaker 6: I think so? Yeah, I think so so.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned, stay tuned.
Speaker 7: Thanks for sticking with us this whole journey.
Speaker 2: I know it's been a long one.
Speaker 7: It has well. Until next time, wash your hands
Speaker 2: You filthy animals.