GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
CREDIT: CREDIT: COLIN CARLSON/GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
WASHINGTON — As the earth’s climate continues to warm, researchers predict wild animals will be forced to relocate their habitats – likely to regions with large human populations – dramatically increasing the risk of a viral jump to humans that could lead to the next pandemic.
This link between climate change and viral transmission is described by an international research team led by scientists at Georgetown University and is published April 28 in Nature (“Climate change increases cross-species viral transmission risk” DOI 10.1038/s41586-022-04788-w).
In their study, the scientists conducted the first comprehensive assessment of how climate change will restructure the global mammalian virome. The work focuses on geographic range shifts—the journeys that species will undertake as they follow their habitats into new areas. As they encounter other mammals for the first time, the study projects they will share thousands of viruses.
They say these shifts bring greater opportunities for viruses like Ebola or coronaviruses to emerge in new areas, making them harder to track, and into new types of animals, making it easier for viruses to jump across a “stepping stone” species into humans.
“The closest analogy is actually the risks we see in the wildlife trade,” says the study’s lead author Colin Carlson, PhD, an assistant research professor at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center. “We worry about markets because bringing unhealthy animals together in unnatural combinations creates opportunities for this stepwise process of emergence – like how SARS jumped from bats to civets, then civets to people. But markets aren’t special anymore; in a changing climate, that kind of process will be the reality in nature just about everywhere.”
Of concern is that animal habitats will move disproportionately in the same places as human settlements, creating new hotspots of spillover risk. Much of this process may already be underway in today’s 1.2 degrees warmer world, and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may not stop these events from unfolding.
An additional important finding is the impact rising temperatures will have on bats, which account for the majority of novel viral sharing. Their ability to fly will allow them to travel long distances, and share the most viruses. Because of their central role in viral emergence, the greatest impacts are projected in southeast Asia, a global hotspot of bat diversity.
“At every step,” said Carlson, “our simulations have taken us by surprise. We’ve spent years double-checking those results, with different data and different assumptions, but the models always lead us to these conclusions. It’s a really stunning example of just how well we can, actually, predict the future if we try.”
As viruses start to jump between host species at unprecedented rates, the authors say that the impacts on conservation and human health could be stunning.
“This mechanism adds yet another layer to how climate change will threaten human and animal health,” says the study’s co-lead author Gregory Albery, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology in the Georgetown University College of Arts and Sciences.
“It’s unclear exactly how these new viruses might affect the species involved, but it’s likely that many of them will translate to new conservation risks and fuel the emergence of novel outbreaks in humans.”
Altogether, the study suggests that climate change will become the biggest upstream risk factor for disease emergence—exceeding higher-profile issues like deforestation, wildlife trade, and industrial agriculture. The authors say the solution is to pair wildlife disease surveillance with real-time studies of environmental change.
“When a Brazilian free-tailed bat makes it all the way to Appalachia, we should be invested in knowing what viruses are tagging along,” says Carlson. “Trying to spot these host jumps in real-time is the only way we’ll be able to prevent this process from leading to more spillovers and more pandemics.”
“We’re closer to predicting and preventing the next pandemic than ever,” says Carlson. “This is a big step towards prediction—now we have to start working on the harder half of the problem.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic, and the previous spread of SARS, Ebola, and Zika, show how a virus jumping from animals to humans can have massive effects. To predict their jump to humans, we need to know about their spread among other animals,” said Sam Scheiner, a program director with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the research. “This research shows how animal movements and interactions due to a warming climate might increase the number of viruses jumping between species.”
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Additional study authors also included collaborators from the University of Connecticut (Cory Merow), Pacific Lutheran University (Evan Eskew), the University of Cape Town (Christopher Trisos), and the EcoHealth Alliance (Noam Ross, Kevin Olival).
The authors report having no personal financial interests related to the study.
The research described is supported in part by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Biology Integration Institutes (BII) grant (BII 2021909), to the Viral Emergence Research Initiative (Verena). Verena, co-founded by Carlson and Albery, curates the largest ecosystem of open data in viral ecology, and builds tools to help predict which viruses could infect humans, which animals host them, and where they could someday emerge. NSF BII grants support diverse and collaborative teams of researchers investigating questions that span multiple disciplines within and beyond biology.
Addition funding was provided by the NSF grant DBI-1639145, the USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT program, the Institut de Valorisation des Données, the National Socio-environmental Synthesis Center, and the Georgetown Environment Initiative.
About Georgetown University Medical Center
As a top academic health and science center, Georgetown University Medical Center provides, in a synergistic fashion, excellence in education — training physicians, nurses, health administrators and other health professionals, as well as biomedical scientists — and cutting-edge interdisciplinary research collaboration, enhancing our basic science and translational biomedical research capacity in order to improve human health. Patient care, clinical research and education is conducted with our academic health system partner, MedStar Health. GUMC’s mission is carried out with a strong emphasis on social justice and a dedication to the Catholic, Jesuit principle of cura personalis — or “care of the whole person.” GUMC comprises the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing & Health Studies, Biomedical Graduate Education, and Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Designated by the Carnegie Foundation as a doctoral university with “very high research activity,” Georgetown is home to a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health, and a Comprehensive Cancer Center designation from the National Cancer Institute. Connect with GUMC on Facebook (Facebook.com/GUMCUpdate) and on Twitter (@gumedcenter).
JOURNAL
Nature
DOI
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Computational simulation/modeling
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Animals
ARTICLE TITLE
Climate change increases cross-species viral transmission risk
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
28-Apr-2022
COI STATEMENT
The authors report having no personal financial interests related to the study.
Pure science fiction.
Those pseudo-scientists should enter their paper in a fiction writing contest.
Anyone who does not know that the virus came from a lab is lying, believes every lie from the media and Fauci, or does not care enough to check.
The only question is was it deliberately released or was it accidental a little earlier than planned. There were meetings discussing trying to inject the whole world. The media was noted to be a “useful tool” in publicity of a panic.
This was a test run. They would like it to be worse the next time to sell more “injections” as they moaned that not enough people were lining up for the flu vaccine. They even tested the amount of poison in different batches.
And make no mistake, Gates is in on it.
I am an academic infectious disease specialist and have seen this all before. I have lectured on the failed predictions of disease-global warming theory and I find there is a track record of inventing or exaggerating all the worst case scenarios and ignoring experience which shows us there is nothing to be alarmed about. The worst times for infectious disease outbreaks among humans were the coldest periods of our history, when crop production declined, nutrition degraded and human immune function was weakened. At these times typically animals that are vectors of human infection came in closer contact with human settlements because of the cold induced scarcity of food.
With the present gentle warming and CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere food production is at an all time high, human health and immunity are nearly optimal and infection diseases are a trivial concern in terms of limiting the duration of human life in most regions. If we see food scarcity again (and it may be just on the horizon) it will be because of green fanatics, idiotic political thinking and armed conflict as is now ongoing sadly in Ukraine.
Thank you for a dose of sanity. Something that seems in short supply in some corners of academia.
” The worst times for infectious disease outbreaks among humans were the coldest periods of our history ,when crop production declined , nutrition degraded and human immune function was weakened . At these times typically animals that are vectors of human infection came in closer contact with human settlements because of the cold induced scarcity of food “……. Yes that is the pattern of history Andy .The Justinian Plague broke out during the 535 – 45 climatic downturn and famines with recurrent outbreaks in the Late Antiquity Little Ice Age …….The Black Death pandemic that killed an estimated 50 % of China’s population and 40% of continental Europe and the British Isles , flared in Europe after the extremely cold and wet ‘Great Famine years of 1315 – 22 , the 1330’s and 1340’s Even malaria and the sweating sickness [ thought to be a hantavirus] were endemic across Europe in the Middle Ages …. Endemic malaria was commonplace in medieval Europe as far north as 68N throughout Scandinavia and northern Russia European malaria infection rates only began to fade after the last epidemic in the 1920’s .The Influenza epidemic that ravaged the malnourished soldiery and civilians of Western Europe in 1918, thereafter taking the lives of 20 – 50 million people worldwide, assumed pathogenesis after a succession of Atlantic cold waves swept over the sodden trenches military hospitals and unsanitary encampments .of France and Belgium .Some epidemiologists suspect the 1916 -18 cold waves and atrocious WWI battlefield conditions interrupted the migratory pathways of [ influenza reservoir] avian flocks
” A Once – In – A – Century – Climate Anomaly Made WW1 And The Spanish Flu Even More Hellish ‘ https://iflscience.com/environment/a-onceinacentury-climate-anomaly-made-ww1-and-the-spanish-flu-even-more-hellish/
There is far far too many idiots and stupids with PhD(s) these days out there.
But the more of them there are, the more the value of the currency is diminished.
That is a comprehensively stupid statement. Everyone involved should be stripped of any characterization of being a “scientist”, “researcher” or even “sentient”.
I have been told for decades that “wild animals” are fully incompatible with human habitats. Despite the Spotted Owl claimed as both endangered and requiring millions of acres of pristine, untouched environment, we find them nesting in large neon signs in packed shopping centers. So what is it? Does the narrative need for wild animals to have wilderness, or can they squat in the common areas of an apartment complex?
I was told that two meters distance will save me from the Wuhan Death Miasma, do the models now have us sharing a bed with wild animals or has the science changed yet again where viruses can travel vast distances and through solid walls?
We were told that once human infecting viruses were commonplace in animals, that the resulting disease is endemic, not pandemic. Has that science changed that now pandemic covers any condition that gives license to politicians to rationalize their depraved indifference to human suffering, and return to highly lethal and destructive “lock-downs” and other liberty destroying tactics?
Walking though the neighborhood, I can feel temperature differences as I enter and leave areas with changing vegetation, proximity to water or slight changes in elevation. In a one mile walk, do I go through radical changes in habitation and environment where I can expect huge changes in flora and fauna? Can someone explain to me how zoos work?
“…dramatically increasing the risk…” is that in relative or absolute values? I understand that a 300% change might appear dramatic, but if it is 1:1,000,000 to 3:1,000,000 I’m not going to see a shrink and get a script for anti-anxiety meds.
I like the rhetorical use of the word “force” as in the animals won’t voluntarily or organically move, but that there will be some outside agent that compels them with the threat of violence. Again, will an entire species of animal get up and migrate into cities just because of a 0.1C degree change in 100 years?
And I can’t help to enjoy the weasel language of “predict”, “likely”, “could” which is a signal to us all that what we are reading is political bovine scat – which just so happens to claim to be “peer reviewed”.
Written, edited and reviewed by utter fools.
A warming climate is the least likely type of climate change to affect pandemics. Historically it has always been that the most virulent pandemics occured during cold periods. It’s easy enough to understand why. Cold eras depress food production, less food results in starvation, starvation creates massive stress on the human body, and stressed bodies are far more susceptible to disease than are unstressed bodies.
If more people would stop and realize that all these doom mongers must continue their doom mongering or they don’t have a job. Then maybe there would be more
realists like us.
After the virus problem was known China sent it’s people all around the world on business and vacation. It should be asked what was their intention.
lol do they know about COVID’s temperature association?
This is the new but totally invalid and dangerous scientific paradigm that is infecting scientific research “..We’ve spent years double-checking those results, with different data and different assumptions, but the models always lead us to these conclusions. It’s a really stunning example of just how well we can, actually, predict the future if we try.” So we dont need to wait for empirical validation of predictions of the future and be cautious about them in the meantime, we can be sure now, declaring victory in advance, and act incautiously because a suite of modeller-instigated models agree! Havent they heard of Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns” including “lurking variables”, also is there any support of forward predictions from backward predictions i.e. hindcasting, or can we infer a degree of researcher confirmation bias, deliberate bias, “this will get it published” bias, “this will make us famous as scientific watchmen” bias etc etc?
The most likely route of animal to human disease transmission is domestic pets. People kiss and cuddle their Pets.
Next in line for transmission risk is the animals we farm and eat.
After that it is the wildlife that regard us as food.
Jphn
For the most part of the last century it seems to be more likely the application of modern technology in health care, mostly pharmaceutical research laboratories.
The SarsCov2 case highlights this proposition.
Far too many significant virus cross species jumps.
cheers
But not at the racetrack.
Always bet the gray horse.
Video games. Scary scary video games.
Focus your worries on real prolems like Fauci funding the People’s Liberation Army’s work on viruses more virulent.
The Ouija board professors.
“Climate Change Could Spark the Next Pandemic”
“Scientists” are WAY behind the curve: It’s been known from the outset of the Covid-19 Plandemic that Gro Harlem Brundtland, yes the Climate Fiction Queen, also co-chaired the Plandemic’s playbook.
https://www.gpmb.org/
https://www.gpmb.org/#tab=tab_3
https://www.gpmb.org/annual-reports/annual-report-2019
So… The Plandemic terror was an exersize in Climate Change policy implementations.
/
We’ve held it for VERY possible that the next logical step after a series of outrageous policy implementations, starting even at least a couple of decades back, was to rid the planet of critical voices by means of WW3. A total clean-out. A fresh start. A beat-up population happily accepting scraps from the rich and famous’ tables.
We’re there.
Conjuncture has it that USA, at war with Russia using Ukraine as a proxy, the Russkie has had enough of the US nonsense and will follow up, after defeating US forces in Ukraine (some 30,000 US troops masquerading as ukranians), Russia will be marching over European territory to throw the yankee into the ocean to “liberate” Europe from the yankee occupants.
What’s next? Nukes?
Oddgeir