CORONAVIRUS AND HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH

• Edwin S. Rubenstein
• June 23, 2020
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
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CORONAVIRUS AND HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH
An NPG Forum Paper
by Edwin S. Rubenstein
June 2020

THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC OVERLOOK AND DENIAL

The coronavirus pandemic is a human tragedy that could kill millions before running its course. Its precise cause is not yet known, but it is suspected that the virus was transmitted to humans by wild animals – allegedly bats – sold at “wet market” in Wuhan, China. (A wet market sells wildlife as food to consumers.) Other deadly viruses – Ebola and MERS, for example – were also triggered by human-animal contact, according to the CDC. In each case, human infringement on natural habitats facilitated the spread of disease to humans.

The relationship between humans and diseased bats goes back a long way: This from a March 2020 article in The Lancet: “Bats have always had viral populations, and despite close association with humans for millennia, this has not resulted in pandemics until recent times.”

The authors of the Lancet piece, prominent epidemiologists, surmise by living in small, isolated groups, early man inadvertently achieved a sort of “social distancing” that prevented infection in one group from spreading throughout the species. They had no knowledge of viruses, of course, and many isolated human groups  undoubtedly perished, but our entire species was never threatened. We were too few and far between. Today humans are everywhere, and a deadly infection in one group – be it a nursing home, a neighborhood, or a nation – represents a threat to homo sapiens everywhere. Pandemics need large, high density populations – the stuff of “recent times” – to propagate and thrive.

You think COVID-19 originates in wildlife? Think again. It’s anthropogenic: caused by human activity. You don’t have to live in Wuhan to know there are too many of us. There are now more than 7.8 billion people on the planet; the U.N. predicts the population will reach 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100 at the current growth rates. The unchecked expansion into new habitats is bringing humans into contact with wildlife pathogens against which we have no immunity.

A SLOW, DISORGANIZED RESPONSE

In September 2019 The World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO) put out a report on pandemic preparedness: “Few natural hazards threaten more loss of life, economic disruption, and social disorder than large-scale disease outbreaks,” the report said, noting that the world is under-investing in advanced planning “… despite evidence that suggests more attention to preparedness would be cost effective.”

For six months the WHO report gathered dust. A costly six months, for among its projections was that a new influenza-style outbreak on the scale of the 1918 pandemic could cost as much as $3 trillion, or about 5% of global GDP. The cost of preparing for the threat? A mere $3.4 billion per year, or roughly one tenth of 1 percent of the potential savings, if it prevents a pandemic.

The report devotes a lot of ink warning of inadequate vaccination capacity in developing countries, but not a drop on the role overpopulation plays in that problem.

We are told that young people are more likely to survive this disease. From a distance, the data seem to support this. Africa is one of the “youngest” places on Earth, with about 60% of its population under age 25. In April African nations reported 45,000 COVID-19 cases, a tiny fraction of the continent’s 1.3 billion people. But Africa also has the world highest birth rates, and lowest life expectancy. Most Africans simply don’t live long enough to become susceptible to the novel virus…   Continue reading the full Forum paper by clicking here.