Pandemics: The Key to Prevention, Part 1 of 3

In late December 2019, news of a strange new virus emerging in Southern China began to surface. The virus, it was reported, was highly contagious. The World Health Organization named it “coronavirus disease,” or “COVID-19.” COVID-19 proved to be extremely contagious and spread like wildfire through China’s massive population. On March 11,2020, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General of the World Health Organization, declared the Virus to be a global pandemic, stating, “We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and the severity. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a (global) pandemic.” The pandemic put much of the world on pause. Billions of people were “self-quarantined” for an indefinite period. Borders were closed, flights cancelled. With billions of hearts was an underlying sense of fear. According to medical research, COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease, an infectious disease transmitted from animals to humans. It is suspected that the COVID-19 virus originated in bats, was then transferred to pangolins or scaly anteaters, and finally to humans. Scientists have demonstrated that every pandemic the world has experienced over the past 100 years has originated from animals.