Since its inception this site has reinforced five reasons to go vegan: The ethics of not harming animals, increasing health by avoiding major illnesses, eliminating the major contributor to climate change, and awesome taste. The entire world is also experiencing a sixth reason: preventing pandemics!
COVID-19 was caused by abusing animals. Evidence suggests that COVID-19 originated in bats and then went through what’s called an intermediary host which was the pangolin in a live animal or ‘wet’ market in Wuhan, China. It’s clear that COVID-19 was transmitted from animals to humans. If the whole world had been vegan last Fall like our family and most of our friends, we wouldn’t all be in lockdown, wearing masks, washing our hands incessantly, physical distancing, and we wouldn’t be hearing news reports of the daily horrendous infection and death count. And, we wouldn’t have had to shut down much of the world’s economies.
You may be thinking that this was a one-time occurrence and that was due to live ‘wet” animal markets that are common in China but interestingly also in places like New York City in the US. The Chinese government and even the US government have now banned those markets. Will those closures prevent the next pandemic? Well, an emphatic no! When we look back at previous viruses that had massive impact, we see that virtually all have an animal to human origin and that they weren’t limited to being spread by live ‘wet’ animal markets.
Animal to human transmission of diseases is called zoonotic transmission. Three out of every four infectious diseases are zoonotic. Ebola came from fruit bats, swine flu from pigs, bird flu from chickens, mad cow disease obviously from cows, SARS from bats, MERS from dromedary camels, and the Spanish flu is thought to have avian origins and due to chickens. While some of the animals may be considered more exotic, others like pigs, chickens, and cows are not. Given the rather startling statistical probability that the next pandemic will also be zoonotic, the best way to prevent the next one is by going vegan.
While viral pandemics are clearly a huge problem as we’re experiencing right now, they’re really just a dress rehearsal for the even scarier bacterial pandemics.
Fully 80% of antibiotics are used in animal agriculture which is causing a substantial increase in antibiotic resistant infections in humans. A total of 2.8 million Americans contract antibiotic resistant infections annually and some 35,000 people die directly as a result of it. Antibiotic resistant infections cost the American healthcare system an estimated $35 billion dollars a year. Antibiotic resistant infections have doubled over the past 15 years. This is all leading to a huge worry that we’re about to encounter a ‘superbug’ that will to resistant to any antibiotics.
With 75 percent of viruses coming from the abuse of animals and 80 percent of antibiotics causing antibiotic resistance given to food animals, I think it’s time for the human race to become vegan, and fast.
A perfect time to go vegan is right now while we’re in the middle of an abuse of animals caused pandemic. Remember, we wouldn’t be in this mess if we all had been vegan a few months ago.