Why are so many primary outbreaks in Congo? Or central Africa in general. Is the hygiene/medical situation there extra bad or something?
Edit: Serious question. Why not Brasil or India, which i would assume to have comparable environments.
Edit: Serious question. Why not Brasil or India, which i would assume to have comparable environments.
Add to that uncontrolled mining, forest cutting and extractive industries, reserves of in-demand “mobile phone” minerals, and the warlords: unprecedented contact between displaced populations and displaced and under pressure wildlife and you’ve got great opportunities for animal-to-human disease transmission, above and beyond the basic human-to-human kind.
It’s a humanitarian and ecological catastrophe and we’re all just plugging our ears saying “La la la” or “is hygiene especially bad over there?”.
Expect more.
Edits: autocorrect corrections
> Why not Brasil or India
Brazil has developmental indicators comparable to China and Mexico so I wouldn't put it in the same bucket as India.
And, Brazil and India actually aren't that dense - they are both much more small town driven due to the constraints of democracy.
A mega city like São Paulo only gets 30% of the deputies of the entire state of São Paulo, meaning smaller towns and rural areas get higher priority. And in India, a megacity like Bangalore only gets 13% of all MLAs in the state of Karnataka.
This made megacities much less attractive to migrate to compared to T2/3/4 cities in both countries.
[0] - https://theconversation.com/why-so-many-epidemics-originate-...
Much potentially vital genetic information can be found in the Congo, but also more “attack vectors” for novel pathogens
The DRC specifically is packed full of heterogeneous ethnic populations with varying levels of ethnic mixing, on the scale of 100-250+ distinct genetic groups
These groups often have higher genetic diversity between them than all “white” peoples globally
Diversity on the whole is a good thing, but can be dangerous in potentially hazardous environments (such as the close, effectively forced daily animal contact you’d find in the DRC)
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This also applies to other mammals, eg why you see so so many Bat-bourne illnesses, as they have by far the most genetic diversity of any mammal group
We have these harmless fruit bats here in Australia, but friends and family are sometimes startled when I tell them off for approaching injured or dead bats. Alive or dead they’re extremely hazardous to humans - even placid ones
I don't think it quite works that way. At least, I only ever hear about a lack of genetic diversity being a threat in the context of diseases and immunity (usually in the context of domesticated animals and cloned plants, like bananas). And there the argument is that once a virus has way in, it can spread to everyone else genetically similar enough.
So I think this is mixing up two views: one takes all genetic variation out there, and asks "if I were to unleash this novel virus on all of them, would any of them be infected?" The higher the diversity, the higher the chance that at least one happens to have the genetic make-up that is accessible by a virus.
But the actual questions are closer to "how many would be infected? How easy would the virus spread?" In that case I would expect higher genetic diversity to result in lower numbers. Like a kind of soft herd-immunity in diversity.
I'm not an expert though, so if anyone who does know their stuff in this matter could weight in that would be appreciated.
Also, as far as I understand the problem for bats is that they share (predigested) food with their fellow bats in their colonies. So if one is sick with anything, all of them will be exposed.
Usually eating them is safe because they are smoked/cooked but the people hunting and preparing them can be infected in the process and transmit to others.
[1] which are hunted and eaten in some areas
>The virus was originally transmitted from animals to humans but now also passes between humans.
>The current outbreak from DR Congo is being driven by sexual contact, but has also been found in other communities.
I think anyone can piece these together and trying to explain it would sound offensive.
Monkey pox was originally called that because the first variant was observed in a lab monkey. Its primary site of infection was not monkeys, actually, and it travels between people fine.