“Any prior narrative that we have somehow conquered infectious diseases through treatment and preventive measures hasn’t really come to pass,” said Jeremy Greene, who teaches the history of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “The attention to covid-19 as a once-in-a-lifetime historical pandemic is itself already a wishful statement … . Many within the infectious-disease community have already been expecting some ‘Next’ to emerge.”
In many respects, the viral invasion is no accident. A warming climate, vanishing forests and global travel have accelerated the spread of pathogens from animals to people, as well as among people in different parts of the world.
The human population has doubled in the past 50 years to almost 8 billion, fueling the expansion of megacities and demand for land on which to build homes and raise crops and animals. The global land transformation has led to the annual loss of almost 25 million acres of forest, eroding a traditional border between the human and animal worlds, according to the United Nations.
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