artical on Corona padamic was diseaster for humanity long article
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The world is enveloped in a global health emergency that is exacting enormous medical and economic tolls upon humanity. The SARS-CoV-2 that has caused the current COVID-19 pandemic is thought to have originated in bats and, via an intermediary such as the pangolin, to have found its way from a “wet market” where live wildlife species were being sold for human consumption in Wuhan, China, to one or more humans at that location [1]. Within months, this highly infectious virus spread throughout China and around the world, currently involving at least 185 countries and territories, with a trail of incredible damage in its wake [2]. The medical community finds itself on the front lines throughout the world dealing with the immediate human health consequences of this rapidly evolving crisis and trying to develop therapies and vaccines, as countries and their leaders attempt to mitigate the overwhelming societal and economic devastations that are unfolding.
From a neuropsychiatric perspective, there are obvious signs of global psychological distress related to social isolation and fears of illness, death, and countless uncertainties about the future [3]. Less attention has been given to neurological manifestations including headache, anosmia, ageusia, ataxia, paresthesia, ischemic stroke, seizures, and various encephalopathies, collectively occurring in up to nearly 40% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in early series. Encephalopathies have been more likely to occur in severely ill patients and have included at least one case of documented viral encephalitis with SARS-CoV-2 in the cerebrospinal fluid [4].
Past respiratory viral pandemics have been associated with other delayed neurological sequelae, including acute inflammatory polyradiculopathy, peripheral neuropathy, myopathy, brainstem encephalitis, and Parkinsonism, the latter of which was prominently associated with the so-called Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 [5]. Given the immense global burden of COVID-19, it is likely that the long-term neuropsychiatric complications will be substantial and it will be important for the medical community to prospectively monitor patients to establish the nature and extent of such morbidities while also dealing with the acute manifestations of this illness that are unfolding each day in emergency rooms throughout the world [3, 5].
Yet, in the midst of all of the pandemonium and destruction, and as we begin to find our way through this crisis, it is imperative for us as a society and species to focus and reflect deeply upon what this and other related human health crises are telling us about our role in these increasingly frequent events and about what we can do to avoid them in the future. Failure to do so may result in the unwitting extermination of all or a good part of our species from this planet. Although it is tempting for us to lay the blame for pandemics such as COVID-19 on bats, pangolins, or other wild species, it is human behavior that is responsible for the vast majority of zoonotic diseases that jump the species barrier from animals to humans.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) observes that “…3 in every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals.” These infections are caused not only by viruses but also by bacteria, fungi, and parasites from a variety of animal sources [6]. The alarming increase in frequency of these lethal zoonotic diseases relates in large part to our human-dominated ecosystem with increasingly unnatural human-animal close contact, grossly aberrant crowding of animals for human purposes, destruction of animal habitats, and vast numbers of highly mobile humans to swiftly carry these diseases throughout the world [7].
As is likely with COVID-19, the outbreak of SARS (an earlier severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003 was the result of a coronavirus that originated in bats with subsequent infection of wild animals sold in live-animal street markets in China. Such markets provide breeding grounds for these and countless other zoonotic pathogens with sick, highly stressed, and overcrowded animals in highly unsanitary conditions. The opportunity for human transfer of these pathogens is increased immensely by allowing direct access to large crowds of humans [8].
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which has infected 75 million people and killed 32 million since the onset of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the 1980s, originated in a type of chimpanzee in Central Africa. Scientists have generally concluded that the chimpanzee version of the virus (called simian immunodeficiency virus) was transmitted to humans and mutated into HIV when humans hunted these chimpanzees for meat and came into contact with their infected blood [9].
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