Leading US physician Doctor Michael Greger speaking to CaveLight Films warned, “in the last few years human diseases have emerged at a rate unheard of in human history”. In the interview, the physician explained that when it comes to the risk factors involved in creating the next global pandemic, “it’s not if, but when”. He added: “The COVID-19 pandemic is just a dress rehearsal.
“It could be the fire drill we need to wake us from our complacency and reform the food system before it’s too late.”
Dr Greger explained that most of these pathogens have emerged from animals, either exotic wild animals like those transported to the wet markets in Wuhan, China, or animals in high-intensity factory farms, like the industrial piggeries of the USA.
Dr Greger said: “Swine flu in 2009 wasn’t from a wet market in Asia it was made in the USA. in an industrial pig operation.”
However, these “wet markets” where animals are brought to be slaughtered and sold, are not just prevalent in Chinese cities.
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Cavelight Films, the documentary production company that interviewed Dr Greger, discovered that there are over 80 live animal slaughter markets in New York City alone.
The documentary producers found the “wet markets” in New York “were packed with people waiting to purchase animals that were crammed into cages, defecating on each other, featherless and visibly sick or dying–some birds were even cannibalizing each other.
In one “wet market” the production company, that has produced work with Tesla’s Elon Musk, found “blood, urine, faeces and body parts everywhere including along the city sidewalks as people walked through it on their way to the subway”.
Dr Greger then suggested the breeding ground for Disease X, could be a lot closer to home for populations in the West than was once thought.
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He added: “Live animal markets are a breeding ground for disease.
“And indeed the next pandemic may come from live bird markets in New York City, rather than wet markets somewhere in South Asia.”
The physician suggested the next virus to jump species from animal to human could be “the deadliest plague in human history”
Scientists are desperately searching for new vaccines to combat the recent emergence of devastating diseases, such as Nipah virus.
Laboratories across the world are also studying any new samples from populations that have expressed new deadly symptoms of disease.
This is in an effort to detect a possible Disease X, before it has spread rapidly because by that point, it would be too late to stop a calamitous pandemic.