Earth Day at a Social Distance

Five decades ago a few college students and a U.S. Congressman started what has become an annual nationwide event dedicated to promoting environmental protection.  It should be a big party for Earth Day’s fiftieth birthday.  Instead it will be a muted acknowledgement with a global virus pandemic still in full force and governments around the world strictly enforcing business shutdown and stay-at-home policies.  Yet no day could be more relevant as people around the world languish in their homes.  Some are suffering from the coronavirus itself and many of the others worried about paying rent and buying groceries.  Everyone is wondering how a little virus could cause so much damage.

The question is especially appropriate for Earth Day.  Disease is inextricably linked to the environment.  In 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) report reported that as much as a quarter of global disease is caused by environmental factors.  Investors would be well advised to understand the disease-environment dynamic as the world risks the economic upheaval of more pandemics.

First, adverse changes in the planet’s climate raise the risk of epidemic as well as cause harm to local flora and fauna.  One of the first changes is in the increase in distribution of disease carried by animal and insect vectors.  For example, ticks that spread illnesses such as Zika, yellow fever and dengue fever have been observed moving into new regions that have warmed up to the tropical temperatures preferred by these critters.  The 2006 WHO report disclosed that over 40% of deaths from malaria, a disease transmitted to humans by a mosquito vector, could be prevented with better environmental management.  

The warming climate is also leading to the emergence of new infectious disease and the re-circulation of old ones. Part and parcel of higher temperatures are changed rainfall patterns and an increase in the number of extreme weather events such as heat waves, drought, storms, and flooding.  Wild birds are well known carriers of pathogens such as West Nile virus, Newcastle disease and avian influenza.  In North America as well as in Europe and Africa, many wild birds migrate long distances between winter havens and nesting sites.  With climate change these patterns are disrupted, accentuating the wild birds’ role in carrying and multiplying viruses.  Indeed, the introduction of the West Nile virus in along the U.S. eastern seaboard coincides with a major bird migration corridor.  Song birds are believed to have carried it inland.

In addition to climate change, disease incidence has also been impacted by more intensive land use.  For example, an increase in forestry production has been linked to rabies in Uruguay in 2007.  It was the first bat-borne paralytic rabies outbreak in livestock in the country.  While vampire bats and rabies had been present in Uruguay, environmental changes as a consequence of more intensive forest exploitation are thought to have caused the spillover into livestock.

In adequate land use regulation and pollution controls are also linked to disease spread.  Hapless birds going about their own business are unwitting accomplices in human negligence.   A report in the Clinical Medicine & Research magazine revealed that wild birds have been known to ingest pathogens such as Salmonella by feeding on raw sewage and garbage and then spreading it to humans by contaminating commercial poultry operations.  Aquatic waterfowl are asymptomatic carriers of all influenza A viruses that end up infecting humans after a turn through the pig population.  That jump from birds to pigs results in a genetic reorganization that results in an increase in virulence.

Shinjuku  Shopping District of Tokyo, Japan on April 19, 2020

The link between the environment and disease is clear.  The finger print of humans on the works is also quite evident.  Our actions change vector population dynamics  -  the movement of all those pathogen carrying critters.  Earth Day 2020 as we sit at home, practicing social distancing, let’s take some time away from the worry of when we can go back to work.  Instead take time to think about how our personal choices may be setting in motion infections like the one that has driven us indoors.

Neither the author of the Small Cap Strategist web log, Crystal Equity Research nor its affiliates have a beneficial interest in the companies mentioned herein.