Costly novel infectious diseases like #COVID_19 are not one-off events & #climatechange will only make things worst. A thread on this week's #KLIColloquium with Daniel Brooks that was equal parts chilling and hopeful--The Perfect Storm: climate change, emerging diseases, and us.
Climate change is the #BlackElephant in the room- major, predictable, yet many are still doing our best to ignore. Emerging diseases is also an extremely costly and serious problem (as we now know).

Here are 5 Things Most People Do Not Know That Are Important!
#1 Pathogens don't need to evolve new genetic abilities to colonize new hosts. They just need opportunities to get in contact. Once in contact, they can develop new, unpredictable capacities in the hosts. This is the Stockholm Paradigm. New diseases can emerge rapidly everywhere.
#2 There is a direct connection between climate change & emerging disease. Climate change moves humans & our crops/livestock around, exposing us to new pathogens.

#3 Global trade&travel also create massive new opportunities.

Earth is a minefield of accidents waiting to happen!
#4 We are trapped in our Anthropocene cities: densely populated petri dishes with low kinship ties, extreme interdependency, and standards of living supported by an invisible underclass without access to public services. A recipe for disaster in face of climate change & diseases
#5 But there is hope! As pathogens use preexisting capacities to infect new hosts, we can find them before they find us to buy time. We can proactively find early warning signs by detecting, assessing, monitoring, acting (DAMA) at the interface of wildlands x human habitats.
We shouldn't focus on sick animals/plants but infected, healthy "reservoir hosts". Finding them requires boots-on-the-ground, grassroots, bottom-up collabs. DAMA's historical roots in biodiversity initiatives rely on local knowledge and the power of the vulnerable & the young.
We are incredibly lucky to host Daniel Brooks, who embodies all 3 aspects of the KLI: reflexive philosophical attitudes towards science, evo thinking, & climate change/sustainability. Many thanks also to "super questions" from our fellows esp bioanthropologists! #paleopathology
Brooks masterfully weaved concrete proposals of hope into a fabric of doom. The Q&A was electrifying! Interested in how evolutionary theory informs his work? Follow up with paper "Climate change and emerging infectious diseases: Evolutionary complexity in action" with WA Boeger.
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