A recent poll on Twitter showed that 52% of respondents believe that COVID19 will speed up and/or improve Bioinvasion Scientists' efficiency to communicate the importance of addressing Biological Invasions. The three options to vote were: YES, NO and I don't care. (https://twitter.com/Ale_Bortolus/status/1254144480502046726?s=20 )
To me, the most important result was not the shy 2% by which the option YES won the poll. The best result was that the "I don't care" option received zero votes. That's unprecedented. It means that people care about this serious problem. Let's remember that although biological invasions are now considered by IPBES as one of the top 5 major causes of biodiversity loss, some years ago most people (including *many* scientists) wouldn't even know what "biological invasions" and "invasive species" meant.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear that the introduction of exotic invasive organisms (such as the SARS-coV-2 ) may not only affect the landscapes and/or the biodiversity around us, but they can also have fast deadly effects on people worldwide. But, will our societies learn fast enough to see the big picture? will COVID19 speed up and/or improve Bioinvasion Scientists' efficiency to communicate the importance of addressing Biological Invasions? Does that depend solely on the skill of the Bioinvasion experts or of our society's? we´ll see.
Share your thoughts here, if you have one.
Yes. However earlier record show that the history of disease is usually forgotten .
If you mean let's pay attention when Taiwan puts out an early warning, almost two months before the US response? I'll certainly be paying attention, the WHO certainly will continue to pretend they don't exist, I can hope the US Gov "learned their lesson" but, if we're being honest, when no one is ever held to account for global disasters then there is no incentive for any meaningful change. Without steep incentives and steep consequences how exactly do you get the ball rolling?
Before addressing the proposed topic, which incidentally, we have been studying for years with other pandemics and epizootics in my laboratory, it should be noted that the hypotheses to understand their origin in humans have a lot to do with the thought of the landscape ecology.
These hypotheses, structured as landscape sciences do, but under the thought of rhizomatic ecology, tell us about how all animals are connected; hypotheses that serve to remind us of our animal condition and that shout at us, because they cannot say it louder, that as much as we live in artificial environments, we continue and will continue to be animals on the planet; a planet called earth which is our holistic environment.
Regardless of the origin or the time we have been together, some animals with others, the pandemic is the result of a zoonosis that may well be direct or indirect, in this case, as of May 2020, the way in which we are transmitted: Hypothesis 1: bats transported to the Guangzhou market were the original source for direct transmission of CoVid-19 to humans; Hypothesis 2: Pangolins (the most trafficked animal on the illegal market worldwide and widely consumed in China and other Asian regions) or a domestic animal such as dromedary or cat, could have been infected with CoVid-19 by bats and be the intermediary vectors of the virus to reach humans; Hypothesis 3: Pangolins could have directly infected the human. As can be seen, the crazy conspiracy idea that it was a virus created in the laboratory by either North Americans or Chinese and deliberately released or accidentally escaped into the environment is discarded biochemically.
Now, to understand this pandemic, we must remember that rhizomatic ecology tells us that humans are immersed in an ecosystem (holon) within larger ecosystems until they reach the Holo (Earth), and that each system has subsystems that directly influence adjacent or remote holons.
Bats are a very special group of mammals because their ability to fly allows them to have very high thermal regulation. Its temperature rises a lot during flight and drops considerably during rest. Their metabolism is more intense than that of the rest of the mammals and their immune system is much stronger, in such a way that they can have viruses, bacteria and parasites without causing apparent damage, but transport them long distances (zoocoria). The tangle of the rhizome extends indefinitely since where the bat reaches, it can infect endemic organisms such as the pangolin or dromedary, or common domestic animals, such as cats. It can even infect people when they are crowded into a market to trade and move more from there; huddled in a refugee camp or crowding into migratory groups to escape environmental catastrophes, dictatorships, famine, for example.
The natural migrations of fauna are becoming more extensive every day in the sense that the borders and the breeding or feeding sites are widening, covering more geographic area, interacting more with humans. A human population from a site that, if it did not previously have contact with said animal, can be infected more easily than people from populations that have lived with this animal for centuries. Likewise, consequences of the recent climate change and the illegal trafficking of species is the favor of this dispersion of pathogens, since the trafficked animals lack a clinical certificate, are transported in poor conditions, increase their stress, and therefore are more susceptible to suffer more pathogens and infect the fauna that accompanies them on their journey and final destination, including humans, of course, since we are also accompanying fauna. Climate change, on the other hand, encourages migratory behaviors in animals that are increasingly longer in their days of searching for places to reproduce, feed, hibernate, etc. The rhizome of the Earth has no territorial beginning or end, lacks a center and has nodes with vanishing lines and nodes with convergence lines, which can change, appear more or disappear; They can also modify their arms and nodal extensions, but it will always remind us that the whole planet is oneself and that humanity belongs to this planet as well as a bat or a pangolin, caring for them is caring for ourselves.
Avoiding the introduction and translocation of biological species is a pending subject of landscape ecology that now tries to give us the same teaching as in the time of the black plague (1347-1353), of cholera (1817), of the Spanish flu ( 1918) or the Asian flu (1957), the numerous cholera pandemics (1961, 1991, 1992 ...), swine flu (1976, 2009 ...), avian flu (1878, 1997, 2003, 2005, 2006 ...) and of course, by CoVid (2003-2004).
The next question is, are we ready to learn and apprehend the teachings of the earth? This question is the same as the beginning of the forum, and although I tried to answer it with historical facts, I think I did not reach a favorable conclusion for us. We will soon forget what happened and the whole rhythm of life will remain the same, only with the memory of these bad days of humanity.
As I see it, biased views and perspectives may pose a threat to the way we interact among disciplines:
"Species distribution models are a powerful tool for ecological inference, but not every use is biologically justified. Applying these tools to the COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to yield new insights, and could mislead policymakers at a critical moment. "
SOURCE: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1212-8.pdf
This recent disease will enhance importance of Biological Science. More students will persue career in medicine , pharmacy, Zoology, Botany, Physiology.
Chemistry, Toxicology & Biotechnology. Even interest in food technology,Agriculture & Microbiology & to be specialized Virology.
COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus has had deleterious effects on human beings. Man are trying their level best to fight against it. Biological invasion is a dynamic process. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 disease, scientists, physicians and pharmacists have been trying heart and soul to understand the new virus, to uncover possible treatment regimes and also discover effective therapeutic agents and vaccines with a hope of getting new insights.
Preprint Pandemic related Health literacy – A Systematic Review of li...
It should but speed and efficiency needs to be balanced with the effectiveness of information dissemination. Otherwise, misinformation and bad science will become florid, especially in this infodemic we are in. Our team's recent review showcases this where the health literacy of COVID-19 in non-medical and medical populations were sub-optimal.
There is definitely room for improvement and let's look forward to that.