COVID likely came from bats. Monkeypox comes from monkeys. The bubonic plague was spread by rats many years ago. As you can easily conclude for yourself, animals aren’t always our friends or healthy meals.
France24.com tells us that increasing outbreaks of zoonoses, meaning diseases that humans get from animals, could lead to another pandemic. Furthermore, the same source reveals that what’s fueling such diseases in recent decades is climate change, deforestation, mass livestock cultivation, as well as other ways that humans are messing with the animal world, more or less deliberately.
Monkeypox is on the rise
Different countries of the world continue to see a rise in monkeypox cases. There are currently about 1,000 cases reported to the World Health Organization (WHO). Fortunately, no deaths have been reported so far.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director, said:
More than 1,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox have now been reported to WHO from 29 countries that are not endemic for the disease,
So far, no deaths have been reported in these countries. Cases have been reported mainly, but not only, among men who have sex with men.
Some countries are now beginning to report cases of apparent community transmission, including some cases in women.
According to worldometers.info, almost 540 million infections with COVID had been reported across the world in total since the pandemic started. The US reported the highest numbers: over 87.2 million infections and more than a million deaths. India comes second with over 43.2 million infections and more than 524,000 deaths.
While the world had plenty to wait until medications and vaccines for the coronavirus became available, the situation is a lot better when it comes to the monkeypox threat. There are both medications and vaccines available for monkeypox.
Eliminating animal agriculture is the best way to prevent these types of diseases. Three out of every four emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in animals and are in part caused by our reliance on animal agriculture. Let’s go vegan for our health and for the planet.