“We Must Take Action”: A Journal Critique on the “Impact of Climate Change on Human Infectious Diseases: Empirical Evidence and Human Adaptation” “The moment we decide to fulfill something, we can do anything.” –Greta Thunberg For the past two centuries since the beginning of the First Industrial Revolution, the human civilization has achieved great progress, especially in terms of technological sophistication. Humans have been able to industrialize and modernize agricultural areas as well as invent new machines that would improve people’s way of life. Of course, at first, it is good to see such advancements in society. However, there would be costs and consequences if significant threats are taken for granted. For instance, although the industrial revolutions have modernized the human society in essence, governments fail to acknowledge the setbacks of rapid industrialization. Workers in various factories are still suffering from poor working conditions, unjust wages, and lack of benefits. Moreover, people from urbanized areas are experiencing water, air, land, and even noise pollution from large machines in factories and vehicles on roads. As a result, the risk of getting harmful diseases, either transmissible or untransmissible, increases. In a 2016 journal article of Xiaoxu Wu, Yongmei Lu, Sen Zhou, Lifan Chen, and Bing Xu entitled “Impact of Climate Change on Human Infectious Diseases: Empirical Evidence and Human Adaptation”1, the authors mainly discussed the significant relationship between climate change and human infectious diseases, presented evidence that would support the established relationship, and recommended proactive measures to combat both problems. However, before analyzing the journal article, here are some definitions of the terms that will be mentioned throughout the journal critique: Climate change – refers to long-term statistical shifts of the weather, including changes in the average weather condition or in the distribution of weather conditions around the average. Infectious diseases – are diseases caused by living organisms like viruses and bacteria (“Infectious Diseases,” 2021)2. Pathogen – refers to a wide rage of disease agents, including virus, bacterium, parasite germ, and fungi. Hosts – refer to living animals or plants on or in which disease pathogens reside. Vectors – are intermediate hosts and they carry and transmit pathogen to living organisms which become hosts. 1 Wu, X., Lu, Y., Zhou, S., Chen, L., & Xu, B. (2016). Impact of climate change on human infectious diseases: Empirical evidence and human adaptation. Environment International, 86, 14-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2015.09.007 2 “Infectious diseases” (2021, April 29). HealthHub. https://www.healthhub.sg/a-z/diseases-andconditions/500/examplesofinfectiousdiseases_pdf#:~:text=to%20avoid%20infection.,What%20are%20Infectious%20Diseases%3F,)%2C%20Hepatitis%20A%20and%20B. Direct transmission – refers to the transmission of a disease from one person to another through droplet contact, direct physical contact, indirect physical contact, airborne transmission, or fecal-oral transmission. Indirect transmission – refers to the transmission of a disease to humans via another organism, a vector, or an intermediate host. Extreme weather events – refer to a value of a weather or climate variable going beyond a threshold near the upper (or lower) end of the range of observed values. Adaptation – is the process by which a specie becomes fitted to its environment; it is the result of natural selection’s acting upon heritable variation over several generations (Gittleman, n.d.)3. Quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) – is a regular variation of the winds that blow high above the equator; it is driven by atmospheric waves that rise from the troposphere and are produced by intense tropical weather systems (“Quasi-biennial oscillation,” n.d.)4. The whole journal article is composed of an introduction to the topic, methods used to gather data, discussion of the relationship between climate change and human infectious diseases containing subsections tackling the correlation of climate change with pathogens, vectors/hosts, and disease transmission, emphasis of how extreme weather events caused by climate change influence infectious diseases, explanation of the importance of societal response and human factor, and finally, conclusions, further discussions, and recommendations regarding the topic. Basically, the journal article highlights how climate change impacts human infectious diseases via pathogen, host, and transmission, how future researchers should go beyond empirical observation of association between climate and health effect, and some certain proactive actions that would reduce the effect of climate change and infectious diseases to humans, such as improving prediction of associated shifts in infectious diseases at various scales and establishing local early warning systems for health effect of predicated climate change. After reading and analyzing the given journal article, our group has learned that: a. Changes in temperature have a significant effect on the life cycle of pathogens and the diseases they might produce because a pathogen needs a certain temperature to survive, develop, and thrive. Moreover, shifts in temperature may influence or restrict the spatial-temporal distribution of disease vectors. b. Shifts in precipitation due to climate change affect the dissemination of waterborne pathogens, as well as vectors/hosts, for they are positively associated with rainfall, as a general rule. The exception is that rainfall is not always aggregable 3 Gittleman, J. (n.d.). Adaptation. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/adaptation-biology-andphysiology 4 “Quasi-biennial oscillation” (n.d.). Met Office. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learnabout/weather/atmosphere/quasi-biennial-oscillation c. d. e. f. for vectors, such as excessive rainfall might be catastrophic to the mosquito population because it would destroy their breeding sites. Changes in humidity also impacts the pathogens of specifically airborne infectious diseases, such as influenza, as well as the survival of water-borne viruses and virus of vector-borne diseases. Furthermore, many disease hosts tend to strongly respond to humidity change, such as the malaria transmission through impacting the activity and survival of mosquitoes. Sunlight may also affect pathogens in terms of providing favorable conditions for the multiplication of a certain cholera. It can also affect disease hosts through the synergistic function. Wind, in essence, is also a crucial variable impacting the pathogens of airborne diseases in terms of the positive correlation between dust particles and virus survival/transporting. In addition, it has dual effects on disease vectors/hosts, like how it can influence the malaria cycle both negatively (reduce the biting opportunities for mosquitoes) and positively (mosquitoes can extend their flight distance). Different extreme weather events such as El Niño, La Niña, drought, quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), heatwaves, drought, flood, and hurricane cyclone may produce several disease types like vector-borne, water-borne, airborne, and even foodborne diseases that could gravely affect the health of a human being. Throughout the journal article, the group has definitely agreed at almost all points that the authors have raised and discussed, including the correlation between sudden shifts in weather patterns and human infectious diseases. We have also understood how social and economic factors play a vital role in predicting the changing risk for infectious diseases caused by climate change (Semenza and Menne, 2009, as cited in Wu, Lu, et al., 2016)5. Moreover, we also strongly agree that a society’s vulnerability to climate change induced health risk of infectious diseases is further related to its existing public health system and infrastructure. Therefore, to combat these risks, communities, organizations, and governments must step up and take proactive and proper adaptation measures, such as enforcing strong policies or laws which would increase the knowledge and awareness of people regarding climate change and infectious diseases and sufficiently funding public healthcare systems so that potential epidemics or pandemics would be curbed. For countries in the Global South which are termed by the World Bank (WB) as “developing countries), they should increase funding in basic social services intended to serve the needs of the people and avoid implementing anti-people and antienvironment policies. Countries in the Global North (middle to high income countries) should stop meddling with the Global South’s affairs, such as exploiting their natural resources and environment to gain super profit. 5 Semenza, J.C. & Menne, B. (2009). Climate change and infectious diseases in Europe. The Lancet, 9(6), 365-375. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(09)70104-5 On the other hand, we do not see any information or data in the journal article that are contradictory in our beliefs because all of them are backed up by abundant related literatures and relevant evidence. However, our group suggests that the authors should highlight more about the biggest root of climate change and human infectious diseases— capitalism—that capitalism is the primary problem and climate change/infectious diseases are only secondary. Since we have an existing world capitalism system and the superpower/imperialist countries such as the United States and China have capitalist economies, their existence threatens the whole world because of their significant contribution of greenhouse gases and carbon emissions to satisfy private profits that, of course, greatly impact our environment at large. As a matter of fact, Reyes (2019) 6 emphasized that “while the entirety of the capitalist economy that treats the consumption of goods as the center of everything—with its production of plastic, massive industrial waste, pollution of rivers, deforestation, irrational water use, and so much more—is harmful to the environment, what generates the greenhouse gases responsible for global climate change is the use of fossil fuels, primarily oil and gas.” That is why if capitalism will be eradicated, then it is logical to say that the risk of climate change will also greatly decrease. Hence, we believe that socialism is the only solution and the authors of the journal article should highlight this in their future studies because it would put the people and environment in the center over private profits; it is the only solution to climate change (Molyneux, 2019)7. 6 Reyes, F. (2019, September 2017). Capitalism is Responsible for Climate Change. Left Voice. https://www.leftvoice.org/capitalism-is-responsible-for-climate-change 7 Molyneux, J. (2019, October 1). Socialism is the only realistic solution to climate change. Climate & Capitalism. https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/01/why-socialism-is-the-only-realistic-solution-toclimate-change/
