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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

Zika was first detected in Uganda. It seems that the first HIV cases occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). And EVD near the border of South Sudan and DRC.

That's also pretty much where we humans came from. Is that just random coincidence? Or is there perchance a reservoir of sequences that are well prepared to mess with humans?

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For many decades the Congo has had a lot of unsanitary bush meat hunting and food-prep practices, including a massive amount of primate consumption. That's the primary theory of how the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus made the jump from primate to human. West Africa also is having this problem with Ebola. You're right as far as the reservoir of sequences is "well prepared" by incubating in old world primate hosts. I don't know the story behind Zika or EVD.

Like most invasive species, humans face significantly less predation and parasitism in foreign lands.

The mosquito in question doesn't live in colder environments, this is the same reason why Massachusetts doesn't have a Malaria problem.

"Although the climate in some newly invaded areas is conducive to reproduction and survival of this mosquito, in other areas, harsh winters may prevent survival of overwintering eggs into the spring." See http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/06/07/jme.t...

> Like most invasive species, humans face significantly less predation and parasitism in foreign lands.

Right. Good point!

Central Afrika is also the place where apes live in relative closeness to humans - and it is easy to see how we could be susceptible to viruses common to a biologically close species, especially if we are so dumb to eat them.

But the regular outbreaks of bird flu show, that this is not limited to one specific location. With the bird flu, its the markets in Asia, where close contact between poultry and humans creates regular transition of viruses to humans. Fortunately, recent more strict regulations seem to have reduced the bird flu outbreaks.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking and I am not going to ask you to elaborate to appear as though I am being intelligent by asking questions because this conversation is not in real-time, I may not come back here for a few days. No it is not a random coincidence that the diseases you mention came from adjacent regions...it is specifically because those regions are tropical, and have a lot of disease vectors. Read up on, "tropical disease," and how vectors play into disease. Disease comes from random mutations, and when you have a high density of random mutations and things that can carry those new diseases around, you have a higher likelihood of any given species (e.g. humans, for example), contracting a novel disease. While humans originated in the same area as where those diseases are coming from relative to the size of the earth, humans came from a completely geographically distinct and isolated area, e.g. the Rift Valley vs the Congo Basin which is separated by the Mitumba mountain range and has a completely different ecological character. Congo = Jungle. Rift Valley = Savannah. Much more vectors and biological diversity in Congo than Rift Valley.

Edit: For those who are saying, "We are dumb to eat apes." You are actually dumb for not realizing why people would eat apes, because you have a wide range of information gathering resources at your disposal to understand why people would eat apes, but you are not using it, while most of the people who eat apes totally lack information. They are ignorant, while you are actually just dumb.

https://www.amazon.com/Spillover-Animal-Infections-Human-Pan...

Is a good and accessible read on the subject. Though it won't do anything good for your ability to sleep.

Thanks. Looks like a great read about zoonotic diseases.

But what I'm wondering is whether zoonotic diseases from Central Africa generally represent more serious threats than do those from the rest of the world.

Those diseases traveled just as much as we did since the time of 'Lucy'.

The reason you see more of these from Central Africa (and that's one of the reasons I linked the book) if I understand it correctly is that there are some traditions there that make the species jump that much easier.

But all it really takes is a large number of people and a large number of animals in close proximity. Nature tends to find ways to exploit such opportunities.

Bushmeat may be to blame.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat#Role_in_spread_of_dis...

I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not, but interesting argument.

Totally serious. The human line, related species and shared pathogens co-evolved for about a million years. But humans arguably left much of that behind as they spread to Europe, Asia, etc. They became associated with new pathogens, for sure. But for only about 10% as long.

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