COVID-19 & Unspoken Tragedies

Apr 23, 2020

"Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike."
–J.K. Rowling,
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

It's clear that the coronavirus pandemic is truly a tragedy of monumental proportions. Thousands have lost their jobs, healthcare, loved ones. The world won't be quite the same after this is over, which, hopefully, will be sooner rather than later. However, while the entire world is focused on it, we forget other tragedies. Tragedies that are more common and more deadly.

The Most Vulnerable

The year of your birth isn't what makes you most susceptible to contracting COVID-19; simply being old doesn't necessarily mean you're at a higher risk. But we tend to associate the elderly with frailty, sickness, and disease; we put them away in "homes" where their medical issues can be dealt with apart from society. However, as the WHO makes clear, the people most susceptible are those "with pre-existing medical conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease)," though anyone can catch it.[1] But because of the way we live in our society, nearly all senior citizens have pre-existing conditions of some kind. The problem is not age, it's a weak immune system.

SAD Days Ahead

14 of the 15 leading causes of death are primarily caused by lifestyle choices: the way we eat. Even the medical issues listed above -- asthma, diabetes, and heart disease -- are all causally linked to the Standard American Diet (SAD), which is very high in animal products. As Dr. Michael Greger puts it, when we eat the SAD, every time we put an animal product in our body, it's like hitting our shin on a coffee table. And following the SAD means we whack our shins multiple times a day; we never give our bodies the opportunity to heal from the prior injuries. But it's not just our shins being injured when we consume animal products. It's our entire body. So, after destroying our shins, hearts, brains, and everything else for 60, 70, 80, 90 years, when a new as-of-yet untreatable deadly virus comes into town, of course, we're going to be the most at-risk.[2]

Additionally, while the deaths caused by COVID-19 are undeniably tragic, people aren't suddenly going to stop dying from other lethal illnesses. In the United States alone, 375,000 people die each year from heart disease; 296,000 from lung diseases, and 214,000 from brain diseases.[2] That's already 885,000 people, and that's only three of the 15 leading causes of death. While we don't know the exact numbers of coronavirus deaths, the CDC, as of the publication of this post, estimates it at about 45,000 out of 803,000 total cases (in the US).[3] It's still only April -- meaning the majority of these deaths occurred in a span of less than two months, with numbers still rising -- and we don't know when this will end, but we shouldn't forget all the millions of people suffering and dying from diseases that actually can be treated and prevented with a balanced diet. Now more than ever, we need to be taking care of our health.

And, please don't mistake me, I'm not trying to say that if everyone were vegan, the coronavirus wouldn't be an issue. (However, that is actually somewhat true since it, and many other similar pandemics, began with the slaughter of animals -- please see "Animal Origins of Deadly Disease Outbreaks" to learn more.) While I do think it could have prevented some deaths, sometimes things happen that simply can't be controlled. I'm sure many seemingly healthy vegans have also lost their lives to COVID. This is an unprecedented situation, and no one can possibly know what may have happened if the world were a better place.

The Other Most Vulnerable

If I'm being honest, there's a small part of me pleased with our crumbling economy because I'm seeing news about farms and slaughterhouses shutting down. Factory farms are already a playground for disease, and throwing a lethal virus into the mix certainly doesn't help with that. As many warm bodies as possible all crushed together in the same room, breathing in the same air, coughing, sneezing, defecating, urinating, bleeding, excreting pus and other bodily fluids, being castrated, giving birth, catching illnesses. If one gets sick, they all get sick. Is eating a ham and cheese sandwich, something of absolute inconsequence to your life, worth all that? Worth the risk to your own health, especially at this time? It shouldn't be.

Obviously, the employees should not have to work in such vile conditions ever, but especially with the virus spreading, the lack of sanitation -- the blood, rotting flesh, rampant disease -- inherent to animal husbandry should have meant all animal farms and slaughterhouses be shut down immediately. But, of course, money prevails, and now there are growing cases of farm/slaughterhouse workers catching COVID. To just set aside the animals for a moment, there are serious humanitarian issues with these agribusiness giants; take Tyson, for example, who are not offering paid sick leave for their employees, despite the fact that some have contracted the virus and died.[4]

Unfortunately, animal products are flying off the shelves in grocery stores, meaning that production can't fully shut down at all farms and slaughterhouses. Given the inherent danger of killing factories and the public's increased demand for animal products, conditions are only becoming more dangerous for workers and, obviously, for the animals. Additionally, we know that COVID has now spread from a human to an animal from the case of the tigers at the Bronx Zoo.[5] Obviously, tigers do not belong in the Bronx or in any zoo, and they should never have been placed at risk in the first place.

This is particularly alarming if we know now that the coronavirus can spread from humans back to nonhumans, and we know that there are farm/slaughterhouse employees that have been working after contracting the virus, what does that do to the food supply? How safe is it? What happens if the virus mutates again, as it did to transfer to humans in the first place, and farm animals begin to contract it? After all, this began in a Chinese wet market, a place where animals are slaughtered; it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to imagine that killing animals could cause the disease to spread within other animal populations. What if just one percent of the billions of farmed land animals end up catching it? Just like tigers in the zoo, the pigs and cows and sheep, should not be there at risk from human disease. And if you're worried about the economy, what happens if the agriculture sector goes down? We'd be in big trouble.

*Mic the Vegan released a video just yesterday detailing the possibility of transference from humans to animals (and vice versa) in slaughterhouses and how inappropriately meat producers are handling the entire situation -- please watch that for more information regarding these issues!

Pollution & Positives

On the bright side, amid the shutdown of factories, transportation, and other businesses during the global lockdown, the air has flourished. Using satellite images, you can see here that air pollution has dropped by 30 percent across the northeast US. Other countries have also seen similar changes, which you can view here in these Reuters graphics, contributing to thousands of fewer pollutant-related human deaths.[6] It truly is amazing how quickly the planet bounces back when humans are forced to stop destroying it. In addition, wild animals have returned to cities where they usually would be scared off from the human bustle. (You can look at some beautiful pictures of the animals here.) Long ago, humanity took over these animals' native land, and finally, they get the opportunity to come back. It's unfortunate, though, that it's only short-term. Lastly, probably my favorite piece of news so far is that the annual running of the bulls -- which was the topic of my second-ever blog post, "Matador" -- has been canceled![7]

History Repeating

Finally, with the coronavirus completely taking over every aspect of our lives, we've completely forgotten about other recent tragedies. In January -- despite the fact that COVID was alive and spreading -- all anyone could think about were the Australian bushfires. A few months before that, it was the Amazon fires. And in the past few years, California alone has been ravaged by wildfires. In 2016, we had the Zika virus; in 2014, it was Ebola; in 2009, swine flu. We've become accustomed to tragedies, moving from one to the other, caring about them until the next one arrives and takes our attention away. Terrible things keep happening over and over and over again, and I'm sure before the year is over, we will have faced at least one more international tragedy. We need to realize and accept that humanity is the primary problem, that the planet is trying to warn us of the damage we're causing, and then we need to take action.

Safe or Sorry

Please, be safe. Please, stay home. I know everyone's getting antsy being cooped up, but, as cliché as it is, it's better to be safe than sorry. It's difficult to grasp the magnitude and seriousness of the problem for those of us at home, largely separated from the devastation caused to our entire society. But this remains a severe threat to everyone, and to keep us all protected, let's continue to be safe and vigilant.