How the melting glaciers can cause the next epidemic

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a warming planet greater temperature

variability new pathogens like covet 19

what does this mean for us as humans

why is it absolutely essential that we

slow down climate change

friends we live in an ocean of bacteria

viruses and fungal pathogens in fact

like fish living in water we live in a

sea of microbes they make life possible

for us on the planet they produce half

the oxygen that we breathe they take

care of breaking down our waste and they

enable the very life that makes us

possible however some of them also cause

disease as we have seen most recently

with covid

a virus that normally lives in bats has

managed to find its way into humans

where it is able to survive and thrive

and when this happens and it’s a process

we call zoanosis then we face diseases

we’ve never faced before

climate change makes us possible in at

least three ways that we know of

first our very environment is changing

and putting us in close contact with

hidden pathogens that we have never

encountered before

a few years ago

anthrax killed a 12 year old boy in the

yamal peninsula in a remote part of

siberia

another 20 people in this area were

infected with anthrax and another 100

suspected cases were hospitalized

but very importantly more than 2 300

reindeer in the area died from the

infection

why did this happen

thawing permafrost which is permanently

frozen layers of soil released

previously immobile spores of anthrax

into the nearby water and soil

and then into the food supply

there had been no anthrax outbreak in

this region in the previous 75 years

the siberian permafrost which is about a

million years old is home to billions of

funguses bacteria and viruses that are

slowly emerging with the melting of the

permafrost when these pathogens

eventually jump to animals and then to

us humans we are at great risk

second the increase in temperature is

selecting for pathogens that are able to

adapt to our temperatures many funguses

would not normally survive in the human

body because our bodies are just too

warm for them but some of them are now

adapting to the warmer ambient

temperature due to climate change

and as you can see in this graphic these

newly adapted fungi move to birds and

finally to humans where they cause

terrible diseases

a recent example is a fungus called

candida auris this fungus was first

described in 2009 after it was isolated

from the ear canal of a 70 year old

japanese woman in tokyo

thirty to sixty percent of people with

canada oris infections have died i

repeat thirty to sixty percent of people

with canada oris infections have died

to date there have been fewer than 10

000 cases globally but as we saw with

cases of black fungus in the aftermath

of covid fungal pathogens are always

waiting to attack patients with weakened

immune systems

third is the combination of climate

change and drug resistance as we use

more antibiotics in humans in animals to

help them grow fatter faster and even on

fruit trees we’re helping to make

pathogens more resistant to the drugs

that we typically use to treat these

bacterial infections with now take the

example of the fungus canada orders

which i just spoke about canada happens

to be resistant to the most common

category of antifungals called azoles

and that’s probably because we have

extensively used azoles as fungicides in

agriculture

research by my team at princeton

university shows that gram-negative

bacteria a particularly lethal category

of bacteria and those that are drug

resistant are more likely to thrive in

warmer temperatures

specifically every one percent increase

in temperature results in a two percent

increase in the frequency of resistant

bacteria

so as the climate changes we face even

more lethal pathogens that we can no

longer treat

even today 700 000 deaths are caused

each year mostly in developing countries

because of these drug resistant bacteria

and nearly all of the disease-causing

bacteria that we encounter have become

drug resistant

and as this graphic shows the number of

enzymes that bacteria are now able to

produce to disable antibiotics that we

know of was just 102 about 50 years ago

today there are over a thousand of these

enzymes that we know of

so where does this leave us climate

change is already causing rising oceans

hurricanes droughts floods and heat

waves at a scale we have not seen before

climate variability is a challenge

but at dimensions we don’t even

understand yet

and undoubtedly as with covid we will

discover more

but the sad truth is that the people who

are most affected are the poor who also

happen to be the most vulnerable to

infections

the very people who did not contribute

to climate change to begin with are the

most affected

we’re simply not ready for climate

change

if we want to avoid a repeat of the past

two years of covid we simply have to

understand that we humans are vulnerable

to pathogens we need more research we

need to be proactive with surveillance

to find pathogens before they find us

but we also need to slow down climate

change

my friends we have no choice

and you hold the key

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you