Epidemics & Ecologies

Reading in the time of COVID-19 

by

William San Martín, Alexandra Vlachos and Graeme Wynn

As citizens around the globe face restrictions on movement, long periods of isolation, and rolling (almost incessant) news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, we thought that this might be a good time to pause and think (and read and reflect).  We are in one of the greatest public health and economic crises in living memory (one of the last survivors of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Hilda Churchill died from the coronavirus in the UK on 28 March 2020). In many ways, the circumstances in which we all find ourselves are unprecedented. Yet it is helpful to remember that people and societies before us have faced similar challenges. Indeed, a colleague, Tim Brook,  has just found space in the pages of Newsweek (March 25, 2020) to explain “Why Historians (sort of) Love Pandemics.”  

What follows is an initial gathering of materials broadly familiar to us, dealing with the history of societies, diseases, and ecological change across time and space. They are roughly categorized and in some cases briefly annotated. This list is seriously incomplete.  We have for the most part left aside scientific and medical literatures, and focused on the works of (environmental) historians as well as on books rather than articles. There are exceptions, of course. Categorizing scholars who work in interdisciplinary space is a fraught exercise at best, and we could not resist including a few short pieces of pithy comment.   We aim to spark conversations rather than to provide a curated and finalized list of sources and resources. There is a vast literature, so please feel free to add your own favourite suggestions to this list, if you feel so inclined, by sending them to William San Martín.  Above all, however, we hope that this quirky, idiosyncratic post provokes thought and helps to clear some of the fog of anxiety that envelops the world in April 2020. 

If there is one thing that this prolonged moment of global crisis reveals, it is that we are all in this together. So too are we, every one of us, caught up in the challenge of remaking the future that has been thrown down upon us by the current pandemic. 

Societies have adapted and evolved in the face of similar crises in the past, and that too may be a helpful message to be found in the items below, as we contemplate the need to build stronger, more resilient, and more environmentally benign economies and societies for the future.

As climate and species assemblages rapidly change, zoonotic and vector-borne diseases—infectious diseases transmitted from animal hosts by such vectors as fleas or other means—are outpacing ecological and epidemiological sciences. During the last decades, Dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya have received massive attention from the public and global health institutions. More recently, coronaviruses have become a paradigm of new emerging zoonotic diseases and a severe challenge for international experts and authorities. 

Infectious diseases and pandemics traced back to zoonotic agents are not new to human history. Under current scenarios of climate change and human mobility, however, these and other once “tropical” diseases have become a world-wide concern. In some cases, viruses have “jumped” to human hosts because their “traditional” or former host species has been wiped out by human activities. The frequency of disease outbreaks has been increasing steadily. Between 1980 and 2013 there were 12,012 recorded outbreaks, comprising 44 million individual cases and affecting every country in the world. A number of trends have contributed to this rise, including high levels of global travel, trade and connectivity, and high-density living.

But it is not just the shrinking of distance and physical closeness (as in the animal food markets of China for example) that pose a risk to humans. There are striking links between disease outbreaks and climate change and biodiversity loss. Deforestation has increased steadily over the past two decades and is linked to 31% of outbreaks of Ebola, Zika, Nipah and other viruses. Deforestation drives animals out of their natural habitats and closer to human populations, creating a greater opportunity for the spread of diseases from animals to humans. More broadly, climate change has altered and accelerated the transmission patterns of infectious diseases such as Zika, malaria and dengue fever, and has caused human displacement. Movements of large groups to new locations, often under poor conditions, increases the vulnerability of displaced population to biological threats such as measles, malaria, diarrheal diseases and acute respiratory infections. Regarding these issues, see, for instance: How biodiversity loss is hurting our ability to combat pandemics; Coronavirus: 'Nature is sending us a message’, says UN environment chief; John Vidal, “Destroyed Habitat Creates the Perfect Conditions for Coronavirus to Emerge,”  Scientific American, March 18, 2020; and Thom van Dooren, “Pangolins And Pandemics: The Real Source Of This Crisis Is Human, Not Animal,” newmatilda.com, March22,  2020. 

Humans live in a world of viruses and bacteria, and other microbial species.  We could not live without bacteria and are constantly infected by viruses that do us no harm. In contrast to the bacterial, fungal and protozoan cells that constitute a large part our individual microbiomes (and that are far more numerous than human cells), viruses are not cells, and cannot survive without their hosts. There are truly deadly viruses, such as rabies, that kill almost every infected human being. Rabies still kills more than 50,000 people each year, according to WHO, despite the availability of a vaccine and gamma globulin to reduce its effects. From a matter-of-fact point of view, however, coronaviruses—the flu and other respiratory system viruses—have no “interest” in killing their hosts. They would kill off themselves if they did that. They live in our bodies for a certain amount of time, then jump onto the next host of the same species. Their basic biological “interest” lies in keeping hosts alive. But humans with weak immune systems (and that generally includes elderly people), are at risk, and significant numbers die from the respiratory complications associated with COVID-19. 

COVID-19 and other zoonotic illnesses raise several questions about multispecies interactions, public health, and global ecological changes.  They also highlight critical issues regarding risk and vulnerability, socio-economic inequality, and environmental justice. At the intersection of these challenges, we believe historical and socio-environmental expertise can provide important insights about the current management of this global crisis and the future changes in our societies.  

Because we are in the middle of a pandemic and because earlier pandemics and epidemics have generally been characterised in a variety of ways, by contemporary media and historical scholars, we organize the remainder of this post around a variety of criteria, perhaps more recognizable and immediately useful to the historically-inclined mind than more medical/scientific classifications focused strictly on the viral, bacterial or other causes of the infection.  Epidemics are complicated events that need to be understood in relation to social structures and environmental conditions as much as through disease patterns and medical epidemiology.  Others are also making this argument and providing resources with which to gain perspective on our pandemic times. Here we point interested readers to the “Pandemics in Context” site on the Environment& Society Portal of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. We hope you join us, and we invite you to explore and contribute to our readings lists.