Temples, Monkeys and Pandemic Equations
I talked of the why-China is the origin of so many zoonotic diseases in recent times (SARS, bird flu, COVID-19). The key point in those wet markets is the presence of live animals of multiple species, giving viruses opportunities to make the multiple hops across different species. On the other hand, we haven’t seen zoonotic disease transfer from the temples of India and Buddhist countries, where monkeys are all over the place. They are so numerous, and come close to humans all the time. In his awesome book, Spillover , David Quammen writes of one such temple: “Thousands of bites, thousands of scratches, thousands of opportunities, and zero cases (anyway, zero reported cases) of humans sickened.” So why have no zoonotic diseases started off from those temples? Is it because there aren’t other species in close proximity (just monkeys and humans), which means the multiple hops can’t be made? Or is it because the monkeys aren’t under threat around these temples, which...