Activity X- Coronavirus and Ecology

What am I being asked to believe or accept? (what are the claims being made)

    In a summarized version, the things we are being asked to believe/accept from the podcast are also some of the background topics, or background information, used to support the claims being made in the podcast overall. Those summarized claims are

• COVID-19 exists, is a living organism, and isn't going to just go away
• The nature of living organisms always evolving in various ways gave rise to the creation and establishment of the pandemic-causing virus COVID-19
• No matter what, the same exact disease can and will effects different members of the same species differently. Example, a disease could be deadly to one human but not another because of different body types and interactions to the virus
• The ways humans, and government entities handle new diseases has an affect on how the disease spreads, reproduces, and how long it can survive. If it can't spread reproduce for survival, then it will start to die off
• We want dangerous and deadly diseases to die off, or at least calm down until we can learn more about it to better prevent spread. This prevents infections and deaths in humans
• Humans, like other living organisms such as tent worms, must be able to reproduce and spread for the species to survive effectively 
• Humans, like tent worms, live in dense populations, making disease spread fairly easy. This makes us vulnerable to extinction if the disease spreads and evolves faster than we can replenish lost numbers from deaths
• Humans have evolved enough to have developed heterogeneity behavior, which helps us to be able to change the patterns or processes of a messed up system so that it can work right and no longer be messed up
• If human survival relies how how well the coronavirus is able to survive and evolve, then this is proof why it is important for a majority, if not all, humans to being making efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. Our survival as a species literally depends on it 

    Those summarized things we are being asked to believe include David Quammen himself and the knowledge he presents to us to make the above claims, even if implied and not directly said.         

What evidence is available to support the claim?

    Evidence, or credible evidence, that is used to be able to support or back up a claim can be described as being not only factual information that supports said claims, but is also given by a source that 1) you know is going to tell you the truth about the scientific facts or data they are presenting, and 2) have had professional training or experience that taught them those facts or data they are presenting, and have proof of that schooling or experience that gave them that knowledge they speak on, so that you can know for sure that what they are talking about is factual and true. The evidence that is available to listeners in the podcast which support the above claims are composed of the scientifically accurate background knowledge and information that David offer's through the entirety of the podcast while making the argumentative points above. 

What alternative ways are there to interpret the evidence?

    Though evidence is given by someone qualified to speak on the subject, who also presents it alongside other facts that aid in understanding the subject and line of thinking, this evidence given could also be interpreted in different ways. One example: if you dont know the definition of evidence, or what makes evidence credible, then when you hear David give his evidence, you may not know if you should believe it or not as true because 1)you don't have solid confirmation that David is a credible source for the subject, and 2) you may have heard some opposing opinion from David somewhere else, which you will be thinking about while listening to David and deciding if he is right. Not being able to know what info is right causes things to confuse people and even become misconstrued when talked about. This now misconstrued info is going to make ripples and others will be effected by hearing it, especially when they don't know how to differentiate a credible source from a non-credible one to know what info they hear of the disease is true. This exemplifies that the spread of false info, and lack of education can cause a different way of viewing the evidence that is being given

What are the implications of what Quammen is telling us?

    From the background info and educated knowledge Q gives us, we can tell that he is inferring, in essence, some of the summarized points given in the beginning. These implications are

• The ways humans, and government entities handle new diseases has an affect on how the disease spreads, reproduces, and how long it can survive. If it can't spread reproduce for survival, then it will start to die off
• We want dangerous and deadly diseases to die off, or at least calm down until we can learn more about it to better prevent spread. This prevents infections and deaths in humans
• Humans, like tent worms, live in dense populations, making disease spread fairly easy. This makes us vulnerable to extinction if the disease spreads and evolves faster than we can replenish lost numbers from deaths
• Humans have evolved enough to have developed heterogeneity behavior, which helps us to be able to change the patterns or processes of a messed up system so that it can work right and no longer be messed up
• If human survival relies how how well the coronavirus is able to survive and evolve, then this is proof why it is important for a majority, if not all, humans to being making efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. Our survival as a species literally depends on it

What evidence is available to support the claim?

    The outlined claims made by Q can be backed by outside evidence, such as popular memes, stories about what was discovered to have happened early in pandemic, and personal or other known experiences caused from/in pandemic. Popular memes might involve something like the plague doctor meme people made before virus went global, with captions that essentially talk of how through history a disease outbreak can be noticed happening about every 100 years, and how the last one was in like 1919 or 1920, meaning we were due for one. Popular stories or primary accounts could involve the of trend that was becoming popular at the time where people would eat either live bat or bat soup, which early on was thought to be initial way of infection at ground zero.

What additional evidence would help us evaluate Quammen’s points?

    My podcast analysis, included below, which is composed of my own back ground knowledge and in depth thoughts on the podcast would help us as readers to better break down, and understand Quammen's points. The following is said independent analysis:

    David Quammen, a published, educated, and accomplished scientific writer and journalist spoke on the outline topics above, asking  us, the listeners, to keep an open mind on the facts of said topics as he shared the knowledge he had before getting to his points so maybe we can even make our own conclusions. The points Q is making are x,y,z and are expanded on later. These facts or knowledge that Q is asking us to believe/accept to be able to fully adopt his points are as follows 

Intro and background info needed for personal analysis

    In the podcast, Emanuel Vonley, who is the executive editor of emergence magazine, is asking the questions and conducting the interview. Emergence Magazine posts interviews, essays, and stories connecting threads on ecology, culture and spirituality. Emanuel is interviewing science writer and journalist David Quammen whose published books feature spillover, animal infections and the next human pandemic. Earlier in this post I described what evidence is, and how the evidence and author of said evidence is deemed credible, in a simplified way. David Quammen meets the qualifications needed to be deemed a credible, truthful source when speaking on the subjects he discusses in the podcast. This means that since David is proven to have the education or experience needed to be an expert, or at least an up-and-coming expert, on these subjects he presents, then we can, for the most part, take what David says to be scientifically correct and truthful without having to do any google searches first to make sure the information is true. Even the parts that are his own thoughts or ideas are credible thought processes to listen to and consider when it comes to viruses like the coronavirus especially because he has the knowledge and expertise to be a credible source. Moving on, Emanuel essentially wraps up his intro saying the current COVID19/2020 pandemic is a way to gain a new perspective on how humans, plant, animals, bacteria, and viruses exist, live, interact, and spread; or "how to reimagine our relationship with the natural world" (Vonley).   

 

Side note**

    This information given before my analysis merits the personal need to make obvious to others what is obvious to me. What is obvious to me is that, unless you have the level of education and experience that David does on these subjects to be deemed an expert like him, then the "end-all-be-all" conclusion-type thoughts that we as listeners make, even after learning from him, may never be as accurate to the reality of the coronavirus as the his views and opinions of it due to the fact that he is an expert, and we are not. That line of thinking causes me to feel that almost everything he says should be listened to and accepted with an open mind because he knows what he is talking about, and has proof he does. 

   

Start of personal analysis

    In the podcast David and Emanuel spoke about the coronavirus. The coronavirus Coronavirus is known as a zoonotic virus, which David says is an animal infection that is transmissible to humans. The infections disease can be a virus, bacteria, or any other infectious bug. It comes out of a non-human animals, somehow passes into humans, and can replicate, cause disease, and transmit if it takes hold in a host. A this point it becomes a zoonotic disease. 60-70% of known infectious diseases in humans fall into this category, much like old plagues, and even the corona virus. All humans, animals, plants, and fungi, cellular creatures ( or multicellular organisms (?)) be carriers of, or can be infected by their own special kinds of viruses and bacteria, or disease causing pathogens which are typically just little single celled organisms that are little capsules of genetic information that embed themselves in the cells of other creatures.  (or unicellular organisms). Because of this, a vast diversity of viruses and bacteria exist on earth. No one has any actual idea about how many different types, and mutated types, of viruses or bacteria actually exist in the world. Think about it, we as a human race still haven't explored the entirety of the world, or learned everything there is to know about all the creatures and resources that exist. If we don't know all of the specific and different types of animals and plants that exist on earth, then there is no way we can know about all of the types of viruses and bacteria that exist in these new and unknown plants, animals, and fungi, especially when we don't even know of all of the specific and different viruses and bacteria that exist in and interact with humans in the spaces and modes we are familiar with. A lot of that inability to know the true extent of how many exist is because the virus' and bacteria are always evolving and mutating differently in each organism it lives in, even if they are the same type of organism.

    When a virus or bacterial disease jumps from an animal to a human, or from one life form to a different type of life form, it is referred to as a spillover. The animal or life form which the virus or disease originally and unnoticeably lives in is known as the reservoir host or natural host. In the specific case of the corona virus that faces the world in 2020, and it's origins, it is speculated to have possibly been first living dormant, or asymptomatically in horseshoe bats, which then encountered or were eaten by another animal, or even directly humans, until eventually a spillover event occurred successfully in the right animal or group of humans.

    Based off the knowledge shared with us that different organisms like humans, plants and animals are sometime effected by viruses and diseases that are special to, or which typically on affect, that species, and that these special viruses typically exist asymptomatically in host species, then we can draw/ come to our own conclusion that the class/family/type of coronavirus responsible for creating the 2020 pandemic was 1) already existing in the world before we even knew about and identified it as a threat and 2) though the virus that would become COVID-19 was existing in the world already (for who knows how long), and was even identified to be existing and talked of as being a potential threat a couple of years ago in 2013-2015, many people, even educated people with degrees in virology, might lack the deep enough knowledge or thinking processes to realize that it was something that was important to pay attention to years ago when first written of. During the time when it was identified as a potential threat for our nearing futures there we other issues we were focusing on tackling which seemed more important due to lack of scientific data collected,  and collectively shared globally on COVID-19 and its actual threat level. In hindsight, the frame of reference and knowledge needed to fully understand COVID-19's true weight of threat and importance to humanity in 2020 based off the information we had on it all the way back 2013-2015 could really only have been gained from living through the pandemic as long as we have to this point. Some people had ideas and could make predictions with math, but didn't know all that they needed, or have a of the factors needed, to truly and more accurately predict what the coronavirus would actually become. 

     Now that we have been experiencing the pandemic from this virus for a while, have learned how to better understand it, and can be introspective on our experiences with it in order to learn and be more effective at handling new viruses( or pathogen-spillover experiences) introduced to humanity in the future, there are some useful things/conclusions that can be said to help us. Its kind of cool cause listeners can make these small, side conclusions based off of information given so far, before getting to our main conclusions, and these side conclusions help us to better understand the main conclusions we ultimately will come to towards the end of the podcast analysis . Those conclusions are:

• COVID-19 exists, is a living organism, and isn't going to just go away
• The nature of living organisms always evolving in various ways gave rise to the creation and establishment of the pandemic-causing virus COVID-19
• No matter what, the same exact disease can and will effects different members of the same species differently. Example, a disease could be deadly to one human but not another because of different body types and interactions to the virus
• The ways humans, and government entities handle new diseases has an affect on how the disease spreads, reproduces, and how long it can survive. If it can't spread reproduce for survival, then it will start to die off
• We want dangerous and deadly diseases to die off, or at least calm down until we can learn more about it to better prevent spread. This prevents infections and deaths in humans
• Humans, like other living organisms such as tent worms, must be able to reproduce and spread for the species to survive effectively 
• Humans, like tent worms, live in dense populations, making disease spread fairly easy. This makes us vulnerable to extinction if the disease spreads and evolves faster than we can replenish lost numbers from deaths
• Humans have evolved enough to have developed heterogeneity behavior, which helps us to be able to change the patterns or processes of a messed up system so that it can work right and no longer be messed up
• If human survival relies how how well the coronavirus is able to survive and evolve, then this is proof why it is important for a majority, if not all, humans to being making efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. Our survival as a species literally depends on it 

   

    So the coronavirus was just living in another type of organism, most likely asymptomatically, before it made enough contact and interactions with humans to be noticed.  This animal, maybe even the bats, were most likely living in or near Wuhan, China, ground zero of the pandemic, and after being caught live and taken to what is referred to as a wet market,  was able to be sold and consumed by the right person, or right people. A wet market I assume refers to a seafood market, but seafood markets in china typically aren't just selling seafood. So its a market where you can go buy live animals, even wild animals, for domestic uses and food sources. This market, later narrow down as the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, sold more than the name implied, including also live wild and domestic animals such as birds, reptiles, civets, pigs, and various domestic poultry. The spill over event, or specific events where this already existing virus was introduced to the human population from an animal in a way that it could also effectively take hold enough to be amplified and make those humans sick enough to spread to others. Due to the nature of the specific virus being strong, effective, and pretty contagious, on top of the fact that it was basically unknown to humans when being spread, meant the ingredients were all put together which created the perfect recipe for it to become a globally spread pandemic. All of this was taking place and happening in Wuhan in December of 2019, and after a point of spreading and infecting certain numbers of people, it started essentially setting off warnings in national and global health communities such as the WHO and the CDC, signaling the rise of a new, and pretty deadly viral disease emerging rapidly. Its origin was not yet known when it was identified to be an emerging threat around new years, but it was was known that this threat was going to be big regardless of origin. Since new years it has lived up to that identified high threat level, continuing to have flairs and case/ death rate-increases that are only getting worse with the coming cold seasons and with the improper management of exposure-limitations and sanitations-standards surrounding public interactions and public spaces used, which either are or aren't enforced by local, state, and even federal level laws and enforcement practices. Much of this mismanagement of the virus by government entities and the general public is of driven by

•  a lack of education
•  the misconstruing of even true information
•  the sharing of false information
•  the recent popularization to deny facts that have already been scientifically proven true, and instead embrace false facts with no individual research, 
• and
•  the every polarizing political climates and belief systems in America which, in themselves, create different opposing ideas, which are embraced most times simply for prideful reasons, instead of scientifically backed, educated reasons.  

How do Quammen’s points tie in with what we learned before? (be very specific, use the activity number and topic to make your point here, add a hyperlink back to your own blog where that is found)

    Quammen's points tie into basically everything we have learned this semester in small and big ways, which i will expand on in a different color at a later time of update, but for the sake of time I will just say:

His points tie in extensively with everything we've learned, and those connections can be made by reading all my blog posts in chronological order, with this post being last to be read.

What assumptions or biases came up when doing the above steps? (e.g., using intuition/emotion, authority, or personal experience rather than science)

    As discussed above, a lack of education and deep understanding can effect the ways we view information being presented to us. Initially, my assumptions and biases of the coronavirus and human ecology lead me to my own thoughts, feelings, and conclusions that weren't entirely accurate due to lack of knowledge, which were challenged and changed after learning more. Before further education and analysis, some of my initial assumptions and biases included:

• Coronavirus may not affect me so bad because I'm young and healthy, and not in a "at-higher-risk" group
• Coronavirus will go away pretty quickly, at most a year
• Humans are resilient to basically everything since we are technologically advanced
• This virus will be like other viruses, meaning it won't be that serious even if I or others catch it
• The threat and seriousness level of COVID-19 is being exaggerated purely for politics and political agendas, and might even be a hoax

What conclusions are most reasonable or likely?

     From facts presented and points made, it is reasonable to be able to come to/ make conclusions on our own that are more accurate than previous thoughts we had on the coronavirus before listening to this podcast. They're able to be more accurate and scientifically correct, even if just predictions, due to the knowledge that we were given and have analyzed. These conclusions, because of my stance on David and his arguments, are as follows:

• COVID-19 exists, is a living organism, and isn't going to just go away
• The nature of living organisms always evolving in various ways gave rise to the creation and establishment of the pandemic-causing virus COVID-19
• No matter what, the same exact disease can and will effects different members of the same species differently. Example, a disease could be deadly to one human but not another because of different body types and interactions to the virus
• The ways humans, and government entities handle new diseases has an affect on how the disease spreads, reproduces, and how long it can survive. If it can't spread reproduce for survival, then it will start to die off
• We want dangerous and deadly diseases to die off, or at least calm down until we can learn more about it to better prevent spread. This prevents infections and deaths in humans
• Humans, like other living organisms such as tent worms, must be able to reproduce and spread for the species to survive effectively 
• Humans, like tent worms, live in dense populations, making disease spread fairly easy. This makes us vulnerable to extinction if the disease spreads and evolves faster than we can replenish lost numbers from deaths
• Humans have evolved enough to have developed heterogeneity behavior, which helps us to be able to change the patterns or processes of a messed up system so that it can work right and no longer be messed up
• If human survival relies how how well the coronavirus is able to survive and evolve, then this is proof why it is important for a majority, if not all, humans to being making efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. Our survival as a species literally depends on it 

What is your role in what Quammen is arguing?

        Based on the simple facts that Quammen is 1) qualified to educate us on the subject, then 2) gives us important background information about the specific point he wanted to make to help us have a more rounded understanding of it so we can see his line of thinking from education that lead him to that point gave me the confidence to stand 100% behind what Quammen argues. He is clearly qualified, and the way he presents unbiased facts on important background knowledge that I may not have know about which helped him to have that line of thinking provides me with the opportunity to also have knowledge that is needed for me to have my own independent thoughts on the subject. This provides extensive, ultimately endless opportunities for thought and perspective gain on the point(s) made, as well as the pandemic we are currently living through in 2020. This is made even better because all of those things combine to create better opportunities for me to understand how my, and other human lives work with our environments, in turn being able to make me more effective in whatever I decide to specialize in, as I have more knowledge to guide me more in depth with thinking but also be able to make new connections that may not have been made before. As a future environmental scientist that is also somehow possibly mix with public relations, that is ALSO a humble lifelong scholar, I appreciate all of these aspects of knowledge and perspective I gain in not only Quammen's arguments, but the knowledge he shares, as well as the opportunities provided by both him and my professor, Scott Walker, to expand my mind on the current COVID-19 pandemic, and the inner-workings of the human relationship with the natural world, from an ecological standpoint.  

Works cited/ References 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2020, February 15). Coronavirus. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html (Links to an external site.)

Cohen, J. (2020, January 31). Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins. Science. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/mining-coronavirus-genomes-clues-outbreak-s-origins# (Links to an external site.)

Cong, Y., Verlhac, P, & Reggiori, F. (2017). The interaction between Nidovirales and autophagy components. Viruses, 9(7), 182. https://doi.org/10.3390/v9070182 (Links to an external site.)

Triolo, N. (2020, March 17). Why David Quammen is not surprised. Orion Magazine. https://orionmagazine.org/2020/03/why-david-quammen-is-not-surprised/ (Links to an external site.)

Vaughan-Lee, E. (Host). (2020). Shaking the viral tree: An interview with David Quammen [Audio podcast with transcript]. Emergence Magazine. https://emergencemagazine.org/story/shaking-the-viral-tree/