Why Are All of these New Diseases Coming Along More Frequently These Days?

In a word, Evolution!

In another word, Overpopulation!

All organisms, from bacteria upward, are subject to disease. Here are only some of those getting much media coverage in the past decade:

Pandemic, epidemic diseases

Chikungunya

Cholera

Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever

Ebola virus disease

Hendra virus infection

Influenza (pandemic, seasonal, zoonotic)

Lassa fever

Marburg virus disease

Meningitis

MERS-CoV

Monkeypox

Nipah virus infection

Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

Rift Valley fever

SARS

Tularaemia

Yellow fever

Zika virus disease

People ask: When is the chain of outbreaks of new diseases going to stop?

Answer: Never. Pathogens evolve. Formerly harmless microbes may develop into dangerous diseases from time to time. Pathogens cross species lines, moving from a species with a high natural resistance to a new species devoid of natural defenses. Also, many are not new, but are emerging from local regions to the entire Planet Earth. This will never end so long as Homo sapiens continues to exist. Evolution demands it.

Question: Why do these new diseases seem to be emerging more often?

1. Better medical diagnosis spots new diseases that were previously unnoticed.

2. Improved global transportation permits pathogens to cross in hours distances that formerly took decades.

3. Increasing human population. Every single person alive has many microbial parasites and is exposed to many more from human and animal sources. Each person is like a separate Petri dish, a warm medium for culturing pathogens. These pathogens are forever mutating, and some mutations increase (or initiate) pathogenicity. Each person has a certain probability of coming up with a novel disease or a new strain of a known disease every day. As the human population rises, the rate of new disease outbreaks will increase proportionately.

4. Areas where humans are under high stress due to war, malnutrition, etc, are more susceptible to new pathogens, which can then spread.

What can humans do to reduce the problem?

1. Practice better general sanitation to prevent new diseases from spreading.

2. Maintain standby organizations with resources to intervene in outbreaks.

3. Reduce the human birth rate.

4. Improve the standard of living, especially nutrition & medical, to those population living under stressful conditions.