In a world of ‘Ghouliani‘ and ‘Coronavirus‘, it might be better to follow Joe Biden’s lead and change the topic to ‘not polluting’, and ‘not burning fossil fuels’. Yes. Climate change mitigation.
Why? Because “OMG, 115 deg. is too hot outside,” or “OMG the forest fire has reached the back yard,” is easier to explain to GOP Trumpers than the paranormal ‘Ghouliani’ or the science of ACE2-binding microbial pathogens.
Paranormality of Ghouliani or the science of ACE2 binding of Microbial Pathogens are harder to explain than climate change. Photo Credit: This is a screen capture from the Tonight Show wherein Jim Carrey guested. The host is showing Carrey’s extraordinary art. Jim Carrey
@JimCarrey Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
With very little doubt the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spanned the gap between one species to another because of pollution, deforestation, land conversion and the resulting climate change in Asia. This and other dire problems are being issued by an ailing Gaia in other regions besides Asia.
Meanwhile a thing related that was profound in this week’s news was Joe Biden’s talk about transitioning from fossil fuel to renewable clean energy. This topic has been missing for four years and America has walked back into the smoky 30s.
The man-child Joe may be the unexpected eco-messiah for human kind’s salvation. Not as cute but far more upbeat than Greta Thunberg, this man is a breath of fresh air, and God knows the world needs that right now. Read Biden’s full climate and environmental justice plan at joebiden.com/climate
This article will introduce a lay science perspective on the relationship of coronavirus to climate change and pollution.
by Micheal John and Melissa Hemingway
There has been enough time since the Thursday Presidential debate in the United States to hear the moaning of oil barons. But Imagine. No more wars over oil; no more mass murdering thugs in flowing Islamic robes getting away with murder because they are oil rich; and no more blanketyblank oil spills killing sea life, wild life and vegetation; and no more morning choking sessions from polluted air.
We need green. Photo Credit: Micheal John, Photo Cropping/Resizing/Art: Rosa Yamamoto FPM.news
“Mr. Joe” inspired this article as an offspring from another piece that involves an indigenous Venezuelan who has been watching the climate change there for eight decades.
“Mr. Joe is special because of the 31 countries making great plans to stop climate change and bring back the animals and flowers, he is a male. Mostly it’s the mothers who are worried about their children in their future lives. Me. Joe is rare. He is a good, brave man,” says Dor Tibidor, another ‘special’ man, an indigenous inhabitant of the Amazon Basin who has been attending a ‘post-graduate’ school these past three years, for the first time in his well-traveled life of over 70 years. His graduate degrees were taught by the jungle, the mountains, the rivers and the forests.
“The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about 6,300,000 km², or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent.” (Citing Wikipedia)
Mr. Tibidor was introduced to FPMag by female missionary and medical workers in his habitat who have given Mr. Tibidora a feminine perspective these past three years. He is employed by them as a maintenance manager for a church, a small hospital and two clinics in the Amazon Basin of Venezuela. He supports two daughters and their three children in this way in the midst of a struggling, hungry population. His young sons-in-law perished during past rebellious uprisings against the murderous dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Mr. Tibidora in his seven decades of exploring much of South America from Uruguay north has seen plenty of change, especially in the decay of the rain forest in Brazil and what that has cost in life.
He echado de menos muchas flores y plantas hermosas que conocí de niño, que ahora se han ido. ¡Y muchas áreas donde los animales corrían y jugaban, también se han ido!
“I have missed many flowers and beautiful plants I knew as a boy, that they are gone now. And many areas where animals ran and played, the creatures too are gone,” he laments.
Background reading on this topic:
- Climate Change: Replace leaders who pollute. Hold a family meeting. Here we go…
- Is Climate Change Real?
- G20: Deal with Climate Change. End wars. What about Jamal?
- What do Climate, Idlib and COVID19 have in common? The ugly, the bad and the good.
- Yes. Wear a mask. Wear a NIOSH N95 & be climate conscious.
- EU a competent polycentric player. Processing change in response to American threat.
- How To: Be climate friendly. Love Macron’s G7 priority, Earth.
- My Doctor Fauci. Video Insights, CoVID19 pandemic. Here we go, back to school to learn biology.
- People not government can defeat SARS2
Most male leaders have not been able to handle the problem of COVID-19 or the Climate Change issue although some are trying hard and may get it yet.
“This list below of women is just the start to the group of women leaders and some male counterparts like Xi Jinping, President of China, Moon Jae-in, President of South Korea, Lee Hsien Loong who leads Singapore and others, who are going to smack down SARS2 and launch a gender parity economic recovery that will add 23 trillion dollars to the world’s best ever economy,” says Katie Alsop a director of the RINJ Women. Hers is a global group of women who assembled in the early 2000s to fight Facebook’s Rape Pages and then moved on as a civil society organization to fight for the safety of women and children around the world.
- Chancellor Angela Merkel (Germany)
- President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (Liberia)
- President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (Argentina)
- Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed (Bangledesh)
- President Dalia Grybauskaite (Lithuania)
- Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar (Trinidad and Tobago)
- President Dilma Rousseff (Brazil)
- President Atifete Jahjaga (Kosovo)
- Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt (Denmark)
- Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller (Jamaica)
- President Park Geun-hye (South Korea)
- Prime Minister Alenka Bratusek (Slovenia)
- Prime Minister Sibel Siber (Cyprus (North))
- Prime Minister Aminata Touré (Senegal)
- Prime Minister Erna Solberg (Norway)
- Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma (Latvia)
- President Catherine Samba-Panza (Central African Republic)
- President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca (Malta)
- Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz (Poland)
- President Tsai Ing-wen (Taiwan)
- de facto President Carrie Lam (Hong Long)
- Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand)
Climate change is a threat to the habitats of all living things. And climate change is going to send us more viruses say experts.
Recent research from Rachel Nethery, Xiauo Wu, Francesca Dominici and other colleagues at Harvard Chan has found that people who live in places with poor air quality are more likely to die from COVID-19 even when accounting for other factors that may influence risk of death such as pre-existing medical conditions, socioeconomic status, and access to healthcare.
“This finding is consistent with prior research, say the authors, “that has shown that people who are exposed to more air pollution and who smoke fare worse with respiratory infections than those who are breathing cleaner air, and who don’t smoke.”
“In places where air pollution is a routine problem, we have to pay particular attention to individuals who may be more exposed or vulnerable than others to polluted air, such as the homeless, those who don’t have air filtration in their homes, or those whose health is already compromised. These individuals may need more attention and support than they did even before coronavirus came along.”
Research papers on the correlation of air pollution to virus transmission seem to prove the point. This will only get worse.
Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States
This study found that a small increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 leads to a large increase in COVID-19 death rate.
- Measuring the impact of air pollution on respiratory infection risk in China (Environmental Pollution, 2018). This study found that worse air quality in China may increase transmission of infections that cause influenza-like illnesses.
- The association between respiratory infection and air pollution in the setting of air quality policy and economic change (Annals of the American Thoracic Society, 2019). A study of nearly 500,000 New York residents found that higher particulate matter air pollution levels increased the chances of hospitalization for pneumonia and emergency deparment visits, especially for influenza.
- Airborne transmission may have played a role in the spread of 2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks in the United States (Scientific Reports, 2019). Researchers have found that several viruses, including adenovirus and influenza virus, can be carried on air particles. This recent paper finds that particulate matter likely contributed to the spread of the 2015 avian influenza.
- Relationship between ambient air pollution and daily mortality of SARS in Beijing (Biomedical and Environmental Sciences, 2005). During the SARS epidemic in 2003, this study found that increases in particulate matter air pollution increased risks of dying from the disease. SARS is a coronavirus, like COVID-19.
“Humanity has wiped out some 60% of other mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, to the point of being an emergency that threatens civilization,” according to a Wildlife Federation study and report.
“Pollution in Asia has for a century been co-owned by America, which builds its dirtiest factories in Africa and Asia. That pollution has contributed to the loss of many species,” comments Sara Qin, a nurses in Wuhan who lives not far from the wild life markets so much in the media in the early part of 2020.
“Because the host has been increasingly challenged with habitat encroachment to such an extent that the virus is losing a host species, it will be shed and find a new host. It is not a conscious effort but happenstance, it just happens,” explains the veteran of the Wuhan outbreak.
SARS2 wasn’t a Christmas surprise in 2019, this has been going on for a long time. Here are some anecdotal accounts from people exposed to the illegal wild animal trade.
“The distress of wild animals as their habitat is destroyed enables the proliferation of their otherwise suppressed virus loads which find other mammals and attaches to human cells at very dangerous levels.” (Read the article.)
The first known experiences with SARS2 may have been in Bangkok where nurses were exposed to patients from the illegal world animal trade. The people who visit caves to catch wild mammals pick up the snot from bats on their clothes and are believed to have been the first carriers of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These are the workers who catch the animals which eventually find their way to wet markets all over Asia but particularly in China where middle class shoppers will pay well for their shopping for exotic and even banned edible creatures.
Other experiences include northwest United States locales where as far back as 2007, something resembling SARS2 was detected in bat feces. Picking up the virus in low viability particles may have gone unnoticed except for anecdotal accounts among cave explorers.
“Anyone who actually thinks that the current pandemic was caused by a single bat sharing a single particle of SARS-CoV-2 with a human should go join the noisy choir of loud flatulence coming from the USA White House,” says Kathy Poon, another Chinese nurse who is currently based in Shenzhen.
“In the case of the patients in Bangkok, they were part of a criminal ring. We came to know of them because one of the boys who was working at collecting eggs and catching wild animals to get some money for medical school had a young nurse colleague as a girl friend. We learned from her what was happening when sickness spread among the illegal workers and eventually killed two of the criminals who refused to go to the hospital for fear of being beaten up by the government for what they were doing. Our friend could not help them after all normal remedies for pneumonia were applied to the cases,” she explained.
“The boys were told to go to the hospital and those that did had a good health outcome but were later put in jail,” she explained from memory of the events and from one case which she had attended.
When asked about the secrecy involved, she added, “Yes this has happened before. We are all terrified that government will disappear us or punish us and take away our credentials. When a person is sick from something they should not be doing, they go underground. Students in many universities are asked to discretely treat pregnant mothers; treat men with sexually transmitted illness; knife and gun wounds; and sickness they have picked up in places they are not supposed to attend. Sometimes snake bites and other animal bites cannot be reported in case it reveals they attended in forbidden places.”
These anecdotal accounts relate to events in the late summer early fall of 2019 but it is suspected that small viral loads of coronavirus have been transmitted in different parts of the world over the past four decades.
“Nobody pays attention unless a big crisis happens,” says Kathy Poon. “We are treated as just foolish young people. Hence young people doing the things they get into out of curiosity or need for money, keep their eventful stories to themselves or trusted young friends.”
Biological annihilation via ongoing 6th mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses & declines.
Gerardo Ceballos, , and Rodolfo Dirzo
“The strong focus on species extinctions, a critical aspect of the contemporary pulse of biological extinction, leads to a common misimpression that Earth’s biota is not immediately threatened, just slowly entering an episode of major biodiversity loss. This view overlooks the current trends of population declines and extinctions.
“Using a sample of 27,600 terrestrial vertebrate species, and a more detailed analysis of 177 mammal species, we show the extremely high degree of population decay in vertebrates, even in common “species of low concern.”
“Dwindling population sizes and range shrinkages amount to a massive anthropogenic erosion of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services essential to civilization.
“This “biological annihilation” underlines the seriousness for humanity of Earth’s ongoing sixth mass extinction event.
“The strong focus on species extinctions, a critical aspect of the contemporary pulse of biological extinction, leads to a common misimpression that Earth’s biota is not immediately threatened, just slowly entering an episode of major biodiversity loss.
“This view overlooks the current trends of population declines and extinctions. Using a sample of 27,600 terrestrial vertebrate species, and a more detailed analysis of 177 mammal species, we show the extremely high degree of population decay in vertebrates, even in common “species of low concern.”
“Dwindling population sizes and range shrinkages amount to a massive anthropogenic erosion of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services essential to civilization. This “biological annihilation” underlines the seriousness for humanity of Earth’s ongoing sixth mass extinction event.”
Please read the full report.
Plastic pollution in Ghana. Some of these plastic containers have come thousands of kilometers. The characteristics that make plastic a material with diverse and desirable applications for bettering human life, i.e.: lightweight and incredibly durable molecular bonds, render them a widely dispersed, ubiquitous, and persistent threat to human health and the ecosystem. File Photo from The Nurses Without Borders, Ghana.