The Epidemic of Newcastle pneumonia has not yet stopped, and recently it has been rumored that the “Lepto virus” with a high death rate and zoonosis is likely to become the next wave of epidemic diseases. John Vidal, a Writer specializing in environment-related issues, warned that “zoonotic” diseases are as serious a threat to humans as nuclear war, and that an epidemic more serious than NCP is emerging on the “scale of the Black Death. A pandemic worse than Newcastle pneumonia is emerging on a “Black Death scale.
According to the Mirror, environmental writer Vidal wrote in an article he contributed to the book that he had talked to experts from around the world who, unfortunately, made some disheartening predictions and concluded that the “worst case scenario” of the world’s epidemic may not be here yet.
Delia Grace Randolph, head of the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, said she believes humans will see a new wave of zoonotic diseases, a mix of old and new diseases. Vidal blames these new viruses on changes in farming and Food production that have devastated animals’ natural habitats; a new virus could sweep the globe within weeks and kill tens of thousands of people through air travel and asymptomatic carriers before humans can fight back.
Ecologists at University College London (UCL) report that at least 335 new potentially fatal diseases have emerged globally since 1945, of which more than 200 are zoonotic (including viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi and viruses). These microbes are present in wild and captive animals and are now spreading to humans little by little, Vidal said.
Vidal cited deadly viruses that are spreading in other species, including HIV, Ebola, Lassa fever, Marburg and monkey viruses in Africa, SARS and New Coronavirus in China, Chagas disease, Machupo virus and Hantavirus in Latin America, as well as Hendra virus infection in Australia and MERS in Saudi Arabia.
He noted that humans have changed the relationship between wild and farm animals, destroying their habitats and bringing animals together, and that this process is accelerating, and that if we do not understand the severity of the situation, then the diseases that are now prevalent may only be a precursor to a devastating event.
Vidal added that the challenge governments must face is the emergence of a new disease, or a mutation of an old one, an unknown disease that could be as contagious as measles or as deadly as Ebola, at which point humanity will face a pandemic more serious than Newcastle pneumonia, likely to surpass the scale of the Black Death that killed a third of Europe’s population.
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