Here we are again, standing on the precipice of a zoonotic disaster, clutching our pearls while a new plague ravages the natural world. The news: a strain of bird flu, H5N1 or some variant thereof, has wiped out three-quarters of baby seal pups on a remote Australian island. British scientists, ever the harbingers of doom, warn that this is a ‘pandemic threat.
’ Oh, spare me the hysterics. But let us, for a moment, consider the import of this event. The virus, born in the gut of a duck, traversing continents via migratory birds, now finds a new host in a marine mammal.
It is a grim reminder that Nature is the greatest syphilitic courtesan, spreading her gifts indiscriminately. The Victorian era saw the rise of public health after cholera and typhoid ravaged industrial slums. Today, we face a different beast: a pathogen that jumps species with alarming ease, because we have so thoroughly degraded the barriers between them.
Industrial farming, deforestation, global travel: we are building the perfect Petri dish for pandemics. And yet, we react with the same pathetic scramble for vaccines and border closures. The seals are a bellwether.
They are the canary in the coal mine, save that they are seals and they are dying in droves. The real question is: when will we learn that you cannot separate human health from animal health? That our hubris in dominating nature will eventually come home to roost?
The Fall of Rome was preceded by plagues that decimated the empire, brought on by trade routes and urban congestion. We are no different. The only difference is our capacity for self-deception.
We will blame the Chinese, the birds, the farmed pigs, anyone but ourselves. Meanwhile, the baby seals die, and the virus mutates, and we wait for the next great pestilence to remind us that we are not masters of this planet, but merely tenants with a badly leaking roof.
