Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Time Magazine, Climate Change makes future Coronavirus epidemics more likely – though Climate probably wasn’t responsible for the current crisis.
The Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics
BY JUSTIN WORLAND 10:52 AM EST
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I have no evidence that climate change triggered this particular virus to jump from animals to humans at this particular time, or that a warmer planet has helped it spread. That said, it’s pretty clear that, broadly speaking, climate change is likely to lead to an uptick in future epidemics caused by viruses and other pathogens. Scientists have understood for decades that climate change would change the way diseases spread, but, as the planet warms, those hypotheses are being tested and scientists are learning in real time. There are many links between climate change and infectious diseases, but I’m going to focus on one particularly novel—and concerning—area of knowledge: how rising temperatures are making our natural immune systems less effective.
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But, as pathogens are exposed to gradually warmer temperatures in the natural world, they become better equipped to survive the high temperature inside the human body. “Every time we have a very hot day, we have a selection event,” says Arturo Casadevall, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. The pathogens that survive—and reproduce—are better adapted to higher temperatures, including those in our bodies. And, with that, one of our body’s primary defense mechanisms diminishes in effectiveness.
This is not a theoretical, far-off concern. Last year, Casadevall and colleagues documented in the journal mBio how Candida auris (a fungus that gets into the bloodstream, leading to a range of ailments) emerged simultaneously in patients in three different isolated places—southern Asia, Venezuela and South Africa—between 2012 and 2015. In our globalized world, diseases are often transported by human carriers who hop on planes, but in this case the scientists concluded that similar changing climatic conditions in each of these places likely drove the simultaneous development. It’s hard to say how widespread this effect could be, Casadevall says, but there’s no reason to think that it would be limited to fungi like Candida auris.
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Read more: https://time.com/5779156/wuhan-coronavirus-climate-change/
The study quoted suggests that Candida Auris got a foothold in mammals because global warming conditioned a wild fungus to survive temperatures found inside the human body.
The problem with this theory is there are large regions of the world which remain near body temperature all the time, and which did so even in pre-industrial times. At most this region has expanded a hundred miles or so North and South due to global warming.
There were also significant periods of geological history, such as the Eemian Interglacial and the Holocene Optimum, when mammals including hominids experienced extended periods of far warmer temperatures than today.
A more likely explanation for the emergence of a new fungus pathogen is evolution, air travel, and the rise of HIV / AIDS, which provides a large pool of immuno-compromised humans upon whom new pathogens can hone their skills.
“Climate Change makes future Coronavirus epidemics more likely”
I guess they couldn’t find a way to attribute wuhan to agw so they did the best that they could. This obsession with knee jerk attribution alone disqualifies agw climate change as a science. In this bizarre discipline it is a given that all bad things are agw impacts and that all agw impacts are bad and there are no good impacts of agw. They used to taunt deniers about their claim to agw causing a greening of the earth until they found a way to blame the australian bushfires on agw greening so now greening is indeed an agw impact but that too is a horror as explained here where it is shown that wildfire intensity and destruction has increased due to agw greening. In the science of climate science Agw is bad by definition.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/02/02/tbgyozfire/
The Emperor’s New Clothes describes the desperate and insane propaganda that stems from would-be totalitarian regimes. They use fear and intimidation to deceive people in to swallowing the bovine excrement like they were dung beetles. Only a dung beetle should be swallowing every bit of bovine excrement. Most adult dung beetles don’t actually swallow and digest the dung-they process it to feed their young the BS.
How much BS can people swallow?
” At most this region has expanded a hundred miles or so North and South due to global warming.” coupled with the fact that future warming is only going to make a change of another hundred miles sums up reality.
Even if a warming climate may help the spread of some viruses, it would hinder the spread of other viruses. People are always encouraged to receive influenza vaccines in autumn, at the start of the cold season in the United States, when influenza tends to spread. If “global warming” led to warmer winters, wouldn’t that hinder the spread of influenza?
There are many problems with blaming global warming on the spread of viruses or bacteria. Most mammals and birds have body temperatures similar to that of human beings–wouldn’t such viruses also affect non-human mammals and birds over reptiles, fish, and other cold-blooded animals?
Unlike most mammals, human beings do not have fur to protect themselves against cold weather, and must wear clothing and live in heated dwellings to survive winters in temperate areas. Viruses can be dormant in cold weather, but can also live in heated dwellings during the winter. Viruses can also replicate in warm weather, such as spring and summer in temperate areas, which can last six months or more. A slight increase in temperature may lengthen the warm period slightly, but this should not affect the spread of viruses very much.
The Corona virus was first discovered in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Wuhan, China is about 30 degrees North latitude, and can experience freezing weather in December through February, and there are many lakes in the city, where mosquitos can breed, and the city has a very humid climate in summer. If “global warming” contributes to the spread of viruses, why did the Corona virus appear in winter?
I haven’t been to Wuhan in 3 years but I was there in every season at one time or another. It’s very humid most of the time and summers are unpleasant with the heat and humidity. Winter is made cooler because of the humidity also. I saw lots of bugs but don’t recall mosquitoes being a problem; I think they are widely sprayed for, probably with DDT.
In summer at night I marveled at all of the bats flying about, big ones. In my childhood, I used to tie a string to something heavy like a nut and sling them up in the air, whereupon the bats would chase them. I didn’t get around to doing that in China, but I want to.
“A new study suggests that long periods of cold, dry weather helped drive epidemics in ancient and pre-modern China “:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/records-from-ancient-china-reveal-link-between-epidemics-and-climate-change/
The Black Death pandemic of the 14th century correlated with a marked decrease in the NH temperature, or at least that was the prevailing view before Mr Mann got to work.
Perhaps a spurious correlation though. The Black Death came to Europe as a consequence of ships and travelers going eastwards.
“how rising temperatures are making our natural immune systems less effective”
If this were true, people would be dropping dead in the tropics.
Thanks for the likely science
Most hanging out on the site would know about the increase in Europe’s population during the Medieval Optimum. As it used to be called.
More consistently good harvests with the long warming trend was very good for people in England and Europe.
Then in the early 1300s it abruptly changed to cold and rain. Particularly in 1315 to 1317.
That forced a 10 percent die off.
And later conditions got worse.
A recently published book is worth reading.
“The Time Traveller’s Guide To Medieval England”–by Ian Mortimer.
The idea that warming will make contagious diseases worse seems contrary to history.
This is NOT natural
“‘The only problem with this hockey stick representation, however, is that it will not convince anyone of those who really need to be convinced.”
“The message isn’t “It’s real,” the message is “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
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A problem with combined maps like these is that you risk conflating two different sets of statistics and time periods and measuring devices.
So.
Proxy records are not actual temperatures, rather they are averages of temperatures over usually year [200 years ago] to decadal or longer [2000 years ago] time frames rather than daily or hourly frames as used in producing the spike.
A spike in temperatures such as in the current short series could occur and hardly be recognised in the past as it would be averaged out of existence as merely a slightly higher part of the graph.
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I doubt this argument will have any weight if the purpose is alarming people but it should have some weight scientifically.
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Corona virus deaths lag behind the twin factors of contact causing incubation and demonstration of actual disease.
Some alarmists claim a doubling of the disease every 5 days.
Deaths do not represent the proportion of the actual death rate. One would have to compare the number of infections two or three doublings back to get the real death rate per infection.
It looks and sounds nasty.
Blood from survivors might provide Immunoglobulin to save some current victims.
An example of how stupid science/technology writers for MSM was put out today.
So you can check the numbers but the increase in reported infection rate has been going at around a constant 20-25% per day.
So what would any good MSM writer do … project that rate forward and work out how many days until the entire world population is infected at that compound rate 🙂
And now we know why Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and Schumer have become totally nuts…it was obvious all along!
After reading the TIME linked mBio report it seems to me there is another explanation for C.auris pathogenesis that the weather. Authors say before 1996 this fungus was not known to be in humans & it got it’s name from being 1st found in human ears.
The authors mention “… prior to … human pathogen … [it] was an environmental fungus. And humanly found “… mostly in … debilitated …[&] intensive care.
I posit the appearance is linked to medical apparatus’ biofilms in situations with less rigorous biofilm control; thus Venezuela, SouthAfrica & South Asia are where arises, rather than (say) Florida. In support of my contention is author’s statement that “… short transition period … inhabited human surfaces… before being associated with disease ….”
As for the progression of C.aureus now exhibiting a diseased nature, author’s state it’s virulence seems to come from “… plasmid DNA transfer….” Biofilms are capable of thriving on hospital/medical surfaces & interior channels; microbes are notoriously capable of horizontal gene transfer & this occurs in biofilms.
Authors explain how C. auris expresses a lot of heat shock protein (HSP 90) making it cope with human temperature – which, due to how biofilm consortia are adaptive among themselves (ex: horizontal gene transfer) need not come about from changes in the outdoor climate. Current research claims the average human body temperature has gone down from the 1890s to the 1990s in women by about 0.58*F; while men’s average body temperature from the early 1800s (men’s military records extend timeline farther back) to the 1990s has reportedly gone down about 1.06*F . So C.auris would now seem to have human cooling to take advantage of (ex: data from 25,000 British patients’ body temperature shows the average body temperature is now 97.9*F, & thus no longer 98.6*F/37*C.)
JUSTIN WORLAND and his belief that warming palnet makes human-to-human transmission viral outbreaks more likely is just the product of the fevered imagination of socialist journalists. It is wanting something to be true to satisfy their bias.
I think this is rather obvious, as all the resources the Climate Change Money Grabbing Meme is consuming will naturally mean fewer resources to be spent on doing something useful, like fighting a viral outbreak!
Oh I just thought of it.
It was quite a while ago that it was determined that when your nose was cold you were susceptible to, well. catching a “cold”.
The writer’s thesis suggests something different.
When temperatures are elevated you could catch a “warm”.
I can see mothers warning their children about ” catching your death if warm”.
This is pure nonsense. The hottest days are fractions of a degree hotter than in the 1930s or other years. And those temperatures last for a very brief period of time – sometimes only minutes. And usually only in one small area.
Once again this displays a total lack of understanding of what Climate Science is saying is happening.
The climate Malthusians have a double win going on–50,000 flight cancellations and more deaths from a virus.
Greta would be proud.
Strange. One of the leading US geologists said Greta should go back to school instead of telling lies. According to him, warming periods were times of high civilizations and cooling periods were times of hunger and diseases.
So, shouldn’t we be happy if temperatures rise?
Viruses don’t live long enough to reproduce in open air so they cannot adapt to the temperature of open air.
Instead they are adapted to the body temperature of the host organism.
That organism will find it easier to raise its temperature via a fever if the open air is warmer.
So, this article is untrue. Warmer open air makes it easier for the host to defeat the virus.
CREATOR OF US BIOWEAPONS ACT SAYS CORONAVIRUS IS A BIO WEAPON
https://principia-scientific.org/creator-of-us-bioweapons-act-says-coronavirus-is-a-bio-weapon/
Published on February 4, 2020
I am forwarding this link to several medical doctors for their comments.
@Eric
Respectfully:
Candida auris. Genus name. Species name.
Genus name is always capitalized. Species name is never capitalized. Both are either underlined (old typewriter days) or italicized. Always. This is standard scientific nomenclature. Plants, animals, anything with a Genus and species.
This software for replying prevents me from doing so, I expect you’re working on better so is possible for you. Always strive to get the small details correct.
You mean Time magazine still exists. Who in their right mind would subscribe?
Batman has to be the primary suspect. Need to quarantine him.
Looks to me that this is just a bad cold virus. Wuhan has a higher fatality rate than cases outside Hubei province. Something makes them more susceptible. Pollution, 5G, a vaccine experiment gone wrong? Who knows. Like SARS this also attacks Asians and older people more seriously, everyone else gets off with mostly mild symptoms. The biggest problem seems government overreaction, quarantines, travel restrictions, etc.
China provides much of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) needed for drug and vaccines manufacture. Supply disruptions will lead to drug shortages. The US makes no antibiotics domestically for example and rely on countries like India which gets much of its API’s from China. So stock up.
China is known as a rogue state from the POV of pharma safety.
The world relies on China for pharma sourcing.
The world is batsh*t crazy. Moon landing refuters are sane in comparison.
History and even recent experience show us the theory that global warming will cause increasing novel epidemics is unfounded. Throughout the history of human society the worst epidemics occurred during the coldest periods. The likely link is poor agricultural production, poor nutrition with reduced immunity and increased human congestion as people huddle together to battle cold. Claims that malaria would increase with warming are countered by the fact malaria incidence is falling during the supposed warming (largely because countries most at risk readopted DDT for mosquito control). Similarly claims that Lyme disease was increasing (it is) due to warming are countered but the temperature record where Lyme is most prevalent show a 30 year cooling trend. Lyme is increasing because its home range was initially logged and farmed and the deer population (intermediate host of Lyme disease) nearly wiped out by hunting in the early 20th century, but in recent decades that land has been ceded back to forrest and the deer population has exploded. Along with that is the increasing tendency for people to seek recreation in the very environment where Lyme is present.
The progressive development and urbanization of human society is a far more important determinant of human infectious disease outbreaks. On the one hand the increasing prevalence of reliable sanitation, safe potable water and safer methods of industrial food production work along with immunization programs to reduce the most frequent and deadly diseases down to bare shadows of their former selves. But the high densities and mobility of human populations and those same large scale systems of industrial food production and distribution mean that when novel infectious agents emerge their ability to spread widely through the human population is greatly enhanced.
The more decision-makers focus on the mythical malevolence of global warming and neglect the true determinants of wellbeing in human society and the environment the more unnecessary suffering and environmental degradation we will experience that could otherwise be avoided by more sober analysis and adherence to the scientific method.
“This is not a theoretical, far-off concern. Last year, Casadevall and colleagues documented in the journal mBio how Candida auris (a fungus that gets into the bloodstream, leading to a range of ailments) emerged simultaneously in patients in three different isolated places—southern Asia, Venezuela and South Africa—between 2012 and 2015.”
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Interestingly, there’s a strong correlation in —southern Asia, Venezuela and South Africa— too:
https://www.google.com/search?q=airlines+Asia%2C+Venezuela+and+South+Africa&oq=airlines+Asia%2C+Venezuela+and+South+Africa&aqs=chrome.
Something JUSTIN WORLAND 10:52 AM EST ought to consider.