COVID-19 is just the beginning: Climate change is bringing a lot more diseases with it

[applegrove]

COVID-19 is just the beginning: Climate change is bringing a lot more diseases with it

Scientists spoke with Salon about the diseases and pathogens that will be exacerbated by climate change
By MATTHEW ROZSA
Staff Writer, Salon
PUBLISHED APRIL 21, 2023 5:30AM (EDT)

https://www.salon.com/2023/04/21/19-is-just-the-beginning-climate-change-is-bringing-a-lot-more-diseases-with-it/

"SNIP.......

In the hit HBO series "The Last of Us," humanity must battle a malevolent fungus that arises due to climate change and turns people into zombies. While "The Last of Us" is a science fiction thriller and its fungus could actually save the world rather than destroy it, the notion that climate change might cause pandemics or epidemics is hardly limited to fiction. Last month, it was discovered that a flesh-eating bacteria known as vibrio vulnificus is infecting eight times as many people now as it did 30 years ago (from 10 patients annually to 80), a fact made alarming because the disease is fatal to as many as 1 in 5 of the infected. The likely culprit of the jump in infections? The warming ocean due to climate change.

"Tick-borne diseases are less straightforwardly climate-driven... but that is all on the move with climate change too, and is reflected in studies of climate and tick borne diseases."

As it turns out, the COVID-19 pandemic may be just the beginning of our species reckoning with waves of deadly diseases. Yet while there is no evidence that COVID-19 was linked to humanity's ongoing problem of excessive greenhouse gas emissions, the same cannot be said of some of these other nasty pathogens that may be lurking in our collective future if global warming continues to run amok. These are but a few of the most notable known pathogens, diseases and conditions that will become more common as the Earth warms. There may well be others that are yet unknown to science, such as SARS-CoV-2 was — a virus that also may have jumped from animals to humans for reasons related to climate change.

...........

02
Dengue fever
Like malaria, dengue fever is transmitted by mosquitoes and can be be quite harmful to human beings. To be clear, the WHO reassures the public that dengue fever usually is asymptomatic, and when it does lead to symptoms these are often mild such as rashes, headaches, body aches, nausea and fevers. Yet when dengue fever is severe, patients may suffer symptoms like persistent vomiting, severe abdominal pain, bloody vomit and stools, persistent thirst and overall bodily weakness. The CDC estimates that currently there are roughly 400 million people each year who are infected with dengue, although only around 100 million will become sick and approximately 21,000 each year will die.

03
Leishmaniasis
Leishmaniasis is not transmitted by mosquitoes, but rather by sand flies that are on average about one-fourth the size of a mosquito. Between 900,000 and 1.6 million people are infected with this disease every year according to the Pan American Health Organization, and of that number 20,000 to 30,000 will die. The most common form of the disease, as well as the least dangerous, is cutaneous leishmaniasis, which causes sores that if untreated can turn into ulcers, which are often in turn covered by scabs or crusts. These are occasionally painful, but usually not. By contrast, visceral leishmaniasis infects several internal organs (bone marrow, liver and spleen being most common among them) and can be fatal. "Climate change will exacerbate the ecological risk of human exposure to leishmaniasis in areas north of the present range of the disease in the United States (particularly the east-central part of the country) and possibly even in parts of south-central Canada," researchers wrote in a 2010 peer-reviewed study on the disease.

........SNIP"

[Backseat Driver]

1. I recall reading an article once about a rare eye disease that could cause

blindness and possibly death infecting some persons who were in F3+ tornado wind-driven soil debris fields. OK - this might be it:

It's a Reuter's story reported, unfortunately, on Faux Snooze, so I'll not link it here:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Health officials say flying debris from the tornado that tore through Joplin, Missouri, last month is to blame for an outbreak of a rare but serious — and in some cases deadly — fungal infection among some of the more than 900 people injured in the disaster.

Soil or plant matter on debris that penetrated the skin of some of the people who survived the twister is believed to have caused them to contract an infection called zygomycosis, said Uwe Schmidt, an infectious diseases physician at Freeman Health System in Joplin.

Schmidt said he knows of at least nine patients who have had the infection in the weeks since the disaster. Three or four of them died and he said zygomycosis was a factor, if not the actual cause. "It's definitely quite striking," Schmidt told Reuters. "To have so many cases of this is rather rare."
He said he had previously only seen two cases of zygomycosis in his career. [snip]

Symptoms of pain, swelling and skin discoloration typically showed up about five to 10 days after the tornado, Williams said. But depending on a person's age, health and wounds suffered, some cases could still surface, Schmidt said. The infection can spread rapidly and invades the blood supply, he said.
Treatment is with intravenous anti-fungal mediation and removal of damaged skin tissue, Schmidt said. Mold can be seen in some of the wounds, he said.

[Deuxcents]

2. Climate challenges are causing people to migrate to higher ground..

Just read on a thread here where people from a Panamanian tribe has to be relocated from their coastal island after hundreds of years because soon their land will be underwater. These people will bring their culture and their health issues with them and people won’t have the immunity that people where they’re going to have and the people they’re going to won’t have the immune system to fight what the tribe brings. For example..our First Native Americans could not fight the diseases that the settlers brought with them. Aside from food shortages, coastal flooding will cause people to leave and have to survive elsewhere.


See TexasTowlee’s post just two threads down

[roamer65]

4. Planet Earth is our "lifeboat".

Our constant poisoning of the planet is making our lifeboat smaller. Less and less of Planet Earth is available for human habitation day by day.

So…when you have a shrinking lifeboat yet the same number of people (or more), guess what happens?

[roamer65]

5. Earthquakes and volcanic activity will also get worse in the coming years.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/167/1/012018

[albacore]

6. Wait until the tundra thaws and ancient pathogens are thawed out.

"An under-appreciated consequence of climate change is how it will exacerbate the spread of infectious disease. As the world heats up, many species are expected to up sticks and meander many miles away from their typical habitat, bringing various pathogens along with them for the ride. This means that previously unacquainted viruses and hosts will meet for the first time, potentially leading to viral spillover—where a virus jumps from one reservoir host to a new one, like our old friend SARS-CoV-2."
https://www.wired.com/story/arctic-spillover-risk/

[multigraincracker]

7. 2 times in the last 5 years I have been I'very sick.

Blood test came back as “unknown virus”.

[Hortensis]

8. The WHO's current list of PRIORITY diseases with pandemic potential.

Studies are underway to update the 2018 list.

At present, the WHO's priority disease list is:

COVID-19
Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever
Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease
Lassa fever
Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
Nipah and henipaviral diseases
Rift Valley fever
Zika
“Disease X”*

There's always an unidentified Disease X on the list. In 2019 it turned out to be the Covid 19 virus. The number of known diseases with pandemic potential is much, much longer. Roughly 270 virus species are known to infect humans, over 1500 bacterial pathogens. And so on.