Is Climate Change the reason we have a Coronavirus?

[magicguido]

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. We had plagues of many sorts long before climate change.

I don't think that's a provable conclusion.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Environment is an infinitely complex system

change one part you changes countless others, so change is the rule and it's observable, but measureable data is elusive.

[Lokilooney]

3. Or Pangolins...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00548-w

...or bats.

The only thing I know for certain is that I'm scrapping my Sunday night bat and Pangolian stew.

[Marcuse]

4. Could be.

[link:https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/01/24/575974220/are-there-zombie-viruses-in-the-thawing-permafrost|

In the past few years, there has been a growing fear about a possible consequence of climate change: zombie pathogens. Specifically, bacteria and viruses — preserved for centuries in frozen ground — coming back to life as the Arctic's permafrost starts to thaw.

The idea resurfaced in the summer of 2016, when a large anthrax outbreak struck Siberia.

A heat wave in the Arctic thawed a thick layer of the permafrost, and a bunch of reindeer carcasses started to warm up. The animals had died of anthrax, and as their bodies thawed, so did the bacteria. Anthrax spores spread across the tundra. Dozens of people were hospitalized, and a 12-year-old boy died.