What is an epidemic?

An epidemic is a spike of deadly diseases with an abnormally-high rate of transmission. Not only infectious diseases, like the Ebola virus, become epidemics. Currently, in the United States, diabetes and obesity, which are non-infectious diseases, are epidemics.

What is a pandemic?

A pandemic is an epidemic that spreads over several countries and/or continents, affecting large populations.

What is herd immunity?

Herd immunity refers to when a large portion of the population (the herd) becomes immune to an infectious disease, making it less likely to spread from person to person. This type of immunity is achieved through vaccines and infection. The more contagious the disease, the greater the percentage of the population needs to be immune to stop its spread. In the case of measles, which is highly contagious, an estimated 94% of "the herd" needs to be immune.

However, there are some major problems with relying on community infection to create herd immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19. First, it isn't yet clear if infection with the COVID-19 virus makes a person immune to future infection.

Research suggests that after infection with some coronaviruses, reinfection with the same virus — though usually mild and only happening in a fraction of people — is possible after a period of months or years. Further research is needed to determine the protective effect of antibodies to the virus in those who have been infected.

Some of the above information was sourced from the Mayo Clinic website. For more detail, please click on their link:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/herd-immunity-and-coronavirus/art-20486808

Isn’t COVID-19 a Conspiracy?

No. Covid-19 and other coronaviruses have been a fact of life and existed in wild animal populations for as long as we could study them. While this particular pandemic started at a market that sold wildlife as food, pandemics have been a known concern to scientists, biologists and those who are trying to fix our broken food chain for decades. This type of coronavirus - that moved from bats to humans - was identified by scientists at NC University in 2015 and they stated it was just a “matter of time” before it hit the human population. Spreading conspiracy theories when there is accreditation, long-time scientific discussion and knowledge accumulated is damaging and unhelpful to the cause of human health.

Isn’t this only about China and their food system?

No. Zoonotic viruses are a threat to our food system everywhere, in every country. A zoonotic virus can jump to humans at any time, and they have occurred in the US, Europe and beyond. It is racist to blame any one country or people and harms our ability to solve the problem of pandemics and zoonotic disease.

Isn’t our US food system safe?

No, it’s not safe. Animal Agriculture itself involves a shocking amount of biohazard level of protections, pharmaceuticals, and cruel procedures and confinement, to try to render meat and animal products as safe to eat, but it is a system fraught with problems, failures and breaches all the time. There was recently an avian flu outbreak in SC in 2020, and Newcastle Disease spread through Southern California in summer of 2019.

Vegans get the same diseases as people who eat meat. What about salmonella from mushrooms and onions?

“For fruits and vegetables, Salmonella contamination typically occurs due to poor agricultural practices including the usage of improperly treated manure, contaminated irrigation water, food handlers don't wash hands, etc.," says John Gibbons, an assistant professor in the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Department of Food Science. Fecal contamination can also lead to Salmonella infections from consuming tainted meat products. [source: https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2020/salmonella-outbreak.html]

Salmonella bacteria live in the intestines of people, animals and birds. Most people are infected with salmonella by eating foods that have been contaminated by feces. Commonly infected foods include:

Raw meat, poultry and seafood. Feces may get onto raw meat and poultry during the butchering process. Seafood may be contaminated if harvested from contaminated water.

Raw eggs. While an egg's shell may seem to be a perfect barrier to contamination, some infected chickens produce eggs that contain salmonella before the shell is even formed. Raw eggs are used in homemade versions of mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce.

Fruits and vegetables. Some fresh produce, particularly imported varieties, may be hydrated in the field or washed during processing with water contaminated with salmonella. Contamination also can occur in the kitchen, when juices from raw meat and poultry come into contact with uncooked foods, such as salads.

[source: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/salmonella/symptoms-causes/syc-20355329#:~:text=Salmonella%20bacteria%20live%20in%20the,Raw%20meat%2C%20poultry%20and%20seafood.]

How would being vegan stop Lyme disease?

Veganism will not stop Lyme disease. We are pointing out that Lyme disease is a zoonotic disease.

But if humans weren't in such close contact with animals, there would be less chance of zoonotic diseases. Incidences of Lyme disease have risen amongst humans because of two factors: we’ve killed off too much of the wildlife that used to be hosts-a-plenty for the ticks, and we humans have sprawled further and further into wild areas, meaning as our population has grown we’ve pushed into tick territories. The two things together have created the growing problem that is Lyme disease today.

As we have eliminated most of the larger predatory mammals (foxes, cougars, bobcats, etc.), it has left their prey (rats, mice and some bats) unchecked. These are the most prone to carrying viruses that could mutate and jump to humans.

There is very little information taught to people, about what zoonotic disease is and how it has, and continues, to impact us. Most people don’t connect what Lyme disease, Ebola, the “common” flu, and Covid and more have in common. Zoonotic diseases (all these and more) are becoming more increasingly damaging to us because of how we humans interact/impact animals and the spaces they live.

Are we supposed to separate all non-human animals from humans?

Close contact with animals is exactly what causes zoonotic illness which accounts for 60% of all existing disease and 75% of all emerging diseases. While we are all animals, we don’t all share the same gut microbiomes, physiology or immune responses. So absolutely at this point in history when humans have impacted non-human animals and wildlife in historically unprecedented ways, we are seeing and will continue to see a rise in disease caused by our proximity to non-human animals and farming and eating them.

To just say “ticks have always been in our environment” is to not understand humans’ profound impact on changing our environment more than any single species in history. Global warming has also thought to be contributing to the increase in ticks and parasites, as insects typically would die off in winters, but due to human-caused warming, they aren’t anymore, as much. Anyone with a dog in their family can illustrate why Lyme disease is zoonotic. Ticks jump from a deer to a tree and then onto the dog. The dog comes into the home and then the tick jumps on and bites people. One doesn’t need the dog in the equation to get Lyme, but it absolutely increases likelihood of a tick finding their way to you.

Wasn’t Lyme disease caused by a tick that escaped from a lab on Plum Island?

The Plum Island theory doesn’t hold up to scientific analysis. Lyme has been found in specimens dating far back (1896!). Please click on this link for more details in an article on the Science Alert website.