As the world continues to adjust to lifeamidst Covid-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top infectious disease expert in the United States,recently pointedto human activityand a disregard of living in harmony nature with as a major accelerator of pandemicspart of a global chorus elevating such concerns.

"Covid-19 is amongthe most vivid wake-up calls in over a century," Fauci,director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) wrote with medical epidemiologist David Morens, in a paper published last month in the scientific journal Cell. "It should forceus to begin to think in earnest and collectively about living inmore thoughtful and creative harmony with nature, even as weplan for nature's inevitable, and always unexpected, surprises."

Public health experts and naturalists called attention to the report, which notesthat while disease development and spread is nothing new, "we now live in a human-dominated world in which our increasingly extreme alterations ofthe environment induce increasingly extreme backlashes fromnature."

Must-read paper by Fauci & Morens in Cell. Living in a pandemic era makes us think in earnest & collectively about living in more thoughtful & creative harmony with nature. #SARSCoV2 is a perfect virus: novel to humans, pathogenic & highly transmissible https://t.co/JRCKcLKj5a

Scientist and researcher Jane Goodall, who has called the Covid-19 pandemic a "wake-up call" for humanity, agrees with Fauci and Morens' sentiment. In an essay for Vogue this week, Goodall wrote that a more environmentally-friendly global economy could help mitigate future outbreaks.

"Covid-19 is a direct result of our disrespect for the environment and animals," she said. "Zoonotic diseases have been getting more frequent, and it's not just a result of the wild animal markets in Asia and bushmeat markets in Africa, but the factory farms in Europe and America too."

Fauci and Morens note that scientific and technological advances remain important, but that they alone will not safeguard humanity from future pandemic-level diseases. They wrote:

Science will surely bring us many life-saving drugs, vaccines,and diagnostics; however, there is no reason to think that thesealone can overcome the threat of ever more frequent and deadlyemergences of infectious diseases. Evidence suggests thatSARS, MERS, and Covid-19 are only the latest examples of adeadly barrage of coming coronavirus and other emergences.

The Covid-19 pandemic is yet another reminder, added to therapidly growing archive of historical reminders, that in a human-dominated world, in which our human activities representaggressive, damaging, and unbalanced interactions with nature,we will increasingly provoke new disease emergences. Weremain at risk for the foreseeable future.

Nature historian and broadcaster David Attenborough, in a BBC documentary set to air September 13, also issued a warning that protecting the planet and wildlife is essential to preserving the human race.

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"This is about more than losing wonders of nature," Attenborough says "Extinction: The Facts," the new documentary. "The consequences of these losses for us as a species are far-reaching and profound."

Robert Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity Ecosystem Services, who is also featured in the BBC piece, told Sunday People, "We need to recognize that the way we're interacting with nature is increasing the probability of those sorts of pandemics in the future.Wet markets for example, where we've got animals and humans together, and animals that don't normally interact with each other."

Watson continued, "We have to realize how we're exposing ourselves to this and the more we destroy nature, the more we are exposed."

Fauci and Morens noted substantial changes to our way of life are necessary in order to prevent future global pandemics:

Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes inhuman behavior as well as other radical changes that maytake decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to waterand sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues.

Insuch a transformation we will need to prioritize changes in thosehuman behaviors that constitute risks for the emergence of infectious diseases. Chief among them are reducing crowdingat home, work, and in public places as well as minimizing environmental perturbations such as deforestation, intense urbanization, and intensive animal farming. Equally important areending global poverty, improving sanitation and hygiene, andreducing unsafe exposure to animals, so that humans and potential human pathogens have limited opportunities for contact.

It is a useful 'thought experiment' to note that until recent decades and centuries, many deadly pandemic diseases eitherdid not exist or were not significant problems. Cholera, forexample, was not known in the West until the late 1700s andbecame pandemic only because of human crowding and international travel, which allowed new access of the bacteria inregional Asian ecosystems to the unsanitary water and sewersystems that characterized cities throughout the Westernworld. This realization leads us to suspect that some, and probably very many, of the living improvements achieved overrecent centuries come at a high cost that we pay in deadly disease emergences.

In an opinion for STAT, co-authored withJoel G. Breman, senior scientific adviser of the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Morens wrote Wednesday: "Strengthening basic public health measures, including hygiene and sanitation in all countries, can also make us more secure. Emerging viruses should not find ready pathways to facilitate their spread. A stronger global public health infrastructure is also needed to respond quickly and efficiently to emerging viruses and other pathogens."

Morens and Breman continued, "It may seem strange to compare threats posed by human interactions with winged mammals that sleep upside down in caves to that of a terrorist group or a nuclear-armed nation. But scientific evidenceand our collective daily experience coping with Covid-19tells us that pandemics may equal or surpass these dangers. It is time to significantly elevate our response to them so it is equal to the peril they present."

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Warning of More Pandemics to Come, Public Health Experts Urge Collective Examination of What it Means to Live in 'Harmony with Nature' - Common Dreams