For my Biology class, Professor Dowd had a science-based seminar for us to watch. The speaker was Sonia Shah, an award winning author and journalist in the fields of science, politics, and human rights. She is the author of Pandemic, The Next Great Migration, The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move, Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Coronavirus and Beyond, and The Fever; her writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Scientific American, and featured on CNN, Radiolab, Fresh Air, and Ted.com. Shah attended Oberlin College where she earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism, philosophy, and neuroscience.
In her talk, she discussed how microbes turn into pandemic causing pathogens. Over the past fifty years, over three-hundred new pathogens have newly emerged or reemerge, about sixty percent having originated in the bodies of non-human animals; this can be attributed to the fact that humans invade wildlife habitat whenever we expand our lands.
While talking about pandemic causing pathogens, Shah said how we need to be prepared for the next or prevent pandemics from happening altogether. We can achieve this by stockpiling vaccines, building up public health infrastructure, and surplussing capacity in hospitals; the possibilities of overcrowding and sanitary crises are very real. In accordance with sharing information about this, she also discussed the emergence of Ebola, West Nile virus, Lyme disease, Malaria, HIV, Measles, Tuberculosis, Pertussis, Influenza, E. Coli, and Zika.
The topics Sonia Shah went over in her talk related to some concepts we have learned in Biology, such as microbes and biodiversity. Regarding microbes, she talked about them turning into pathogens that can cause pandemics like COVID-19. When she discussed biodiversity, it was mainly about a biodiversity crisis with animals going extinct, about 150 species lost everyday.
Something new that I learned from Shah’s lecture was how microbes can replicate, evolve and adapt, which is why a lot of the time pathogens do not simply die out and instead create pandemics; however, something that I still have questions about is if there are any ways to backtrack and prevent such close proximity between wildlife and humans in order to prevent the spread of pathogens, and would it help if people stopped consuming animals?
