Hotspots, spillovers and the shifting geopolitics of zoonotic emerging infectious diseases: A commentary

Abstract

How might attention to zoonotic emerging diseases be more equitably distributed across the globe? It is a provocative and timely question asked by Lisa Onaga in her essay 'Reprogramming the Story', particularly in light of the violent, racist attacks experienced by Asian people during the Covid-19 pandemic. Spillover origin stories can too readily stigmatise people and regions, placing blame for outbreaks on foreign bodies-human and non-human-as we witnessed when former United States President Donald Trump inculpated China for the virus's origins. 1 But this was not the first time a politician would capitalise on an epidemic to incite hatred and fear. In the summer of 2014, as the worst Ebola outbreak in history devastated the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Trump, who then had his eyes on the White House, added to the already widely circulating public fears, suspicions and scapegoating, tweeting: 'stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will … spread inside our "borders"'. 2 Racial stigmatisation by Trump and others prompted a widespread social media campaign among people in the Liberian diaspora: 'I am a Liberian, I am not a virus'. 3 More often than not, wealthy nations see zoonotic diseases, like SARS, Ebola and Zika, as problems of the Other, diverting attention away from systems of structural violence and racism intertwined with global circuits of capital that have produced inequitable environmental burdens and health disparities within and between nations. 4

Lessons that can be learned from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and their impact on the prophylaxis and treatment development for neglected tropical arboviruses

“…However, actions to reduce such events are yet to be fully established due to the different factors driving the dynamics of spillover, such as climate and environmental changes, global air travel network, population growth and urbanization, anthropogenic activities, demographic changes and migration, and agricultural expansion (Jones et al, 2013;Allen et al, 2017;Wilcox & Steele, 2021;Baker et al, 2022;Mitman, 2022). Based on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and what was recently reported in the past outbreaks, most of these viruses have RNA as genetic material as a single-strand or double-strand.…”