The researchers were only able to look at known relationship between virus and host. Janet Jansson is a scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who studies frozen environments and wasn't involved in the research. She said you need to take the results with a pinch of salt. They are indicative of the problem but not a complete picture of the threat.
Climate change is causing havoc with the status quo of the organisms. The University of Hawaii's Camilo Mora is a data scientist who studies how human activity affects the environment. Mora published a review in Nature Climate Change that showed that over half of the infectious diseases will be affected by climate change. Climate change can come and bite us in the ass, he says.
Mora has had experience with it. The worst pain he has ever experienced was caused by the chikungunya virus he was exposed to years ago in his native country. He realized that his unfortunate encounter with a mosquito was caused by flooding that hadn't been seen before in his country. I found out later that it was related to climate change.
Mora and his colleagues warn that if ice and permafrost thaw, there could be a lot of diseases. In the summer of 2016 a 12-year-old boy in Siberia died of anthrax after a heat wave thaw the frozen soil and reveal a reindeer carcass that had been hidden for decades. The body of the carcass began to thaw. Over 2,000 reindeer were killed by the outbreak and 90 people were sick. There are studies that warn that thaw could uncover antibiotic-resistantbacteria.
Jansson isn't too worried about a big outbreak. She thinks that the risk of emerging Pandemics from thaw is low. Climate change is making the spread of insect-borne diseases more likely. There are so many things we don't know.
We don't know what we don't know The risk of spillover from the climate crisis is an argument for doing all we can to stop it. The world's temperatures are a recipe for disaster. We find something even more frightening when we look for it.
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