About two-thirds of all human infections are of animal origin. Scientists say that the ability of a virus to mutate and adapt from an animal to a human system is very rare, but the spread of human footprints makes that rare event much more likely.

For most people, the possibility of a new disease appearing out of nowhere and raging around the world seemed like a science fiction movie until the novel Coronavirus hijacked the headlines. However, some members of the scientific community have been sounding alarms for decades, warning that it is not a problem and another pandemic will threaten humanity.

Why were scientists convinced that the pandemic situation was ripe? CBS News spoke with three experts to better understand how human behavior is making such developments possible more than ever.

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The simple answer is that scientists speculate that the virus has an origin in bats, but they do not know exactly how it reached humans. Despite years of working on virus cataloging, they have never seen this particular virus before.

It is clear that SARS-CoV-2 is a bat-origin virus. The closest relative is a virus found in horseshoe bats in southern China in 2013, which is 96.2% genetically identical to SARS-CoV-2. , Said Dr. . Peter Daszak, professor at Columbia University and chairman of the EcoHealth Alliance.

Surprisingly, scientists have been actively searching for viruses around the world for decades and have discovered thousands of new viruses in thousands of wildlife hosts. I havent found it, said disease ecologist Dr. Richard Ostfeld. From the Cary Ecosystem Research Institute in Hudson Valley, New York.

How did the virus infect humans from bats? Daszak says there are various ways that can happen. People can be directly exposed to bat fluids and feces by cave, hunting, killing, or slaughtering bats, or simply through contaminated surfaces or the food and drink of people living in rural China. There is. Alternatively, other animals can serve as intermediate hosts, through farmed wildlife or possibly livestock species.

How do environmental destruction and animal treatment contribute to the spread of diseases such as coronavirus? Im invading a new system, @ProfKateJones tells @WeatherProf https://t.co/OCSnRLO7OG pic.twitter.com/WG997kRibm

CBS News [@CBSNews] April 2, 2020

Some evidence suggests that the first population of human cases could have been present in one or more animals brought to the Wuhan wet market where the case was detected, Ostfeld said. It is explained.

Whats clear is that Professor Kate Jones, a professor of ecology and biodiversity at University College London, said the virus had to transform to jump from an animal host to a human host. That is.

Most wildlife diseases remain in wildlife, but they can mutate in ways that can jump over species barriers. Its an incredibly rare event! She told CBS News Was.

In the last 40 years, forests have been destroyed worldwide in Europe-scale regions, and in the last century half of the worlds rainforests have been destroyed.

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Were changing landscapes and penetrating systems on an unprecedented scale, says Jones, the human destruction of natural landscapes changing the interaction between animals and humans, He explained that the dynamics of transmission could also change.

We destroy their ecosystems, hunt them, build houses next to them, and raise livestock next to them Dazak said. We are bringing the virus they have, which has never been exposed in our history, to our own population.

Daszak and his team analyze all known emerging diseases that have occurred in the past 60 years, assess their most likely cause, and are taking place where they may have caused the pandemic outbreak Analyzed the change. Our analysis shows that land-use change, that is, the transformation of tropical forests into farmland and livestock farms, is associated with about 30% of known emerging diseases, Dazak said.

There are many reasons why this disruption of natural habitats can contribute to disease spread. Perhaps most obvious is that habitat disturbances can move animals farther and take pathogens, explains Ostfeld, destroying and degrading habitats in these animal hosts. Spreading reduces health, reduces immunity, and allows pathogens.

The growing demand for durian fruits in China is due to the deforestation wave in Malaysia, where the jungle is cleared in 2018 to give way to such a large plantation near Kuala Lumpur.

MO MOHD RASFAN / AFP via Getty Images

Another factor is that the destruction of biodiversity disrupts the balance between predators and prey. When predators disappear, they often increase their prey, including rats and mice. Rats and mice cause many pathogens to jump from wildlife to humans, Ostfeld said.

Anthropogenic climate change exacerbates the situation by moving animal populations to different regions and reducing animal health through reduced habitat coverage and less than ideal habitat climatic conditions There is a possibility.

With 7.8 billion people living on earth, there is a great demand for food and other products and animals as exotic pets. However, there are significant risks to how animals are captured, transported, contained and killed in different parts of the world.

Both wet markets and wildlife trade are associated with species proliferation and epidemics, Ostfeld said. These animals are snatched from their natural habitat and transported around wild, livestock and other crowded animals.

If you were a virus, you would be very happy in this situation, as jumping to a new host is an easy thing, opening up tremendous opportunities for infection and further infection, he said. .

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Jones is also concerned about land reclamation and the rise of large factory farms. We now have huge and intensive farms of domestic species that interact with wildlife, and those wildlife may function as amplification hosts for many pathogens. Said Jones.

If these animals are raised in unsanitary conditions with many other species, they can create the ideal conditions for these pathogens to jump into us, Ostfeld said. Added.

Mankind has unfortunately learned how dangerous and destructive pandemic viruses can be, but the question is, do we learn from this experience, change our way and take protective measures?

Dazak has a three-point plan that could help minimize future threats.

First, we propose to launch a global effort to identify wildlife viruses that are likely to emerge in the future. We estimate that there are 1.7 million of them, and the overwhelming majority [> 70%] could be found in the Global Virus Project, which costs $ 120 million in 10 years, he said. He has already created a 501c3 non-profit to fund the project.

Second, work with a community of emerging disease hotspots at the forefront. Identify risk behaviors for viruses spilling from wildlife to human populations, and work with these communities to reduce risk, test for evidence of the virus, and stop early-breaking outbreaks.

Finally, he is focusing on developing vaccines to prevent not only the diseases we already know, but also new viruses found in wildlife. Ideally, Daszak wants to see a universal coronavirus vaccine to protect against the whole family of viruses.

Ostfeld hopes that the amount of protected land will be significantly increased to help natural areas maintain their ability to protect us from infectious diseases. He also supports funding scientists working on the issue of how to use already developed areas to provide the food, fiber and other resources people need .

Habitat destruction and climate change pose countless threats to our health and well-being. Its not just viruses, explains Ostfeld. We continue with these disruptive practices because we prioritize short-term benefits for a relatively small number of us and ignore the long-term suffering of all the rest of us. It is not impossible to change this miscalculation, but we have the time to do it infinitely.

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