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Coronaviruses, Ebola, Langya, won’t it stop? Why, suddenly, the diseases decided to appear? Will it be the seven plagues? Is it a plot, biological weapons? None of that, it’s Emerging Diseases. In the last few decades, almost 100 (for real) new infectious diseases have appeared.

Emerging Disease is a new, never-before-identified human infectious disease. Humans have a catalog of 1400 infectious diseases, but new varieties appear every now and then. The impression one gets, however, is that the speed has increased. And there’s a good reason.

The path a germ takes to start infecting humans is almost always the same. #Viruses (the overwhelming majority) that have existed in equilibrium with animals for perhaps millions of years come into contact with humans. This contact is repeated a few times, until…

Someone catches the new disease, and then someone else, and then the virus, which undergoes frequent mutations, ends up adapting to humans and begins person-to-person transmission. Then, it has started. Most, however, end up causing no more than an outbreak, and certainly not a pandemic.

Or, at least, not at first. So it was with Zika, a virus first identified in the 1940s, but which did not cause its first major epidemic until the 21st century. Several factors must come together to provide the opportunity for a pandemic.

The cause of the increase in speed of this process in recent decades is no mystery. First human activity invading and destroying ecosystems, especially agribusiness. This has been one of the main routes of contact between wild viruses and humanity. COVID was like that.

Second, pollution destroying the natural balance, as in the case of the death of bees, part of which was linked to the pesticide glyphosate, from the infamous Monsanto. Loss of natural diversity displaces viruses from their traditional habitats. And guess where they go?

Third, something that is becoming increasingly important and tends to become the main cause of escape of viruses and other germs from nature to humans: global warming. Yes, it exists. And it threatens to profoundly change ecosystems. And cause pandemics.

In conclusion, the fact that new people and emerging diseases are emerging with increasing frequency is mainly related to our behavior as a society. We are collectively responsible for what is and will happen to us. There is still time to intervene.

Originally published as a series of tweets.