Cost of preventing next pandemic equal to just 2% of COVID economic damage

[FfFfFfFF 58,120]

The cost of preventing further pandemics over the next decade by protecting wildlife and forests would equate to just 2% of the estimated financial damage caused by Covid-19, according to a new analysis.

Two new viruses a year had spilled from their wildlife hosts into humans over the last century, the researchers said, with the growing destruction of nature meaning the risk today is higher than ever.

The key programmes the scientists are calling for are: much better regulation of the wildlife trade, disease surveillance and control in wild and domestic animals, ending the wild meat trade in China, and cutting deforestation by 40% in key places. There was a clear link between deforestation and virus emergence, they said, with forest bats the likely reservoirs of the Ebola, Sars and Covid-19 viruses, and tropical forest edges a “major launchpad” for new viruses infecting humans.

“It’s naive to think of the Covid-19 pandemic as a once in a century event,” said Prof Andrew Dobson at Princeton University in the US, who led the analysis. “As with anything we’re doing to the environment, they’re coming faster and faster, just like climate change.”

S: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/23/preventing-next-pandemic-fraction-cost-covid-19-economic-fallout

[Earthling 3,701]

Throw everyone going vegan into the mix (this will help with the deforestation too) and we're onto a winning plan to prevent future pandemics 

[paradox 4,568]

2 minutes ago, Earthling said:

Throw everyone going vegan into the mix (this will help with the deforestation too) and we're onto a winning plan to prevent future pandemics 

[ode 1,534]

problematically avoiding the need to completely replace the factory farming model of food production while calling for an end to the wild meat trade --- as if america and so many other places aren't sitting on the next superbug / pandemic as we treat increasingly filthy meat supply with antibiotics until the bugs we're trying to kill won't respond to medicines at all...