A ‘zoonotic’ disease is one that has jumped from another animal to flourish in humans – it all comes down to nosology How did Covid-19 begin? Some propose a “lab-leak” hypothesis, according to which Chinese virologists working on ways to make bat coronaviruses more dangerous to humans did all too well at that and then let it escape. Others think it more likely that, like many other diseases, Covid-19 is naturally “zoonotic”. What? _Zoon_ is the ancient Greek for “animal”, hence “zoologist” and, um, “zoo”. _Nosos_, meanwhile, is the Greek for “disease”, hence many artful English coinages that have long since, alas, fallen into desuetude, such as “nosography” (17th century), the systematic description of illness (literally “writing about disease”), or “nosotrophous”, disease-causing. A disease that is “zoonotic”, then, is one that has jumped the species barrier from another animal to flourish in humans, such as bird flu and swine flu, but also HIV (from chimpanzees), toxoplasmosis (cats), anthrax (cattle) and rabies (dogs). Continue reading...
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