Essay
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
We Need to Address the Underlying Ecological Determinants of COVID-19
Version 1
: Received: 3 June 2020 / Approved: 4 June 2020 / Online: 4 June 2020 (17:36:28 CEST)
How to cite: Kenyon, C. We Need to Address the Underlying Ecological Determinants of COVID-19. Preprints 2020, 2020060040. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202006.0040.v1 Kenyon, C. We Need to Address the Underlying Ecological Determinants of COVID-19. Preprints 2020, 2020060040. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202006.0040.v1
Abstract
The probability of zoonoses, such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), emerging is strongly related to remediable factors such as habitat encroachment and trade in wild animals. Tackling these underlying determinants is important to prevent future pandemics from the approximately 700,000 viruses with the potential to cause zoonoses. Reversing habitat destruction is also vital to halt the accelerating rate of extinction of a wide array of life forms - with all the adverse consequences these extinctions will have for human health. These insights depend on viewing health and disease from within an ecological theoretical framework. We therefore argue that preventing future zoonotic outbreaks as well as dealing with a range of contemporary health issues would be facilitated by grounding our health sciences in more a more explicitly ecological conceptual framework.
Keywords
COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; zoonoses; ecological; epistemology
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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