Introduction
The spring of 2020 has proven to be an extraordinary time. With a global pandemic, suddenly humans added the words: Coronavirus, Personal Protection Equipment, Acute Respiratory Disease Syndrome, and Ventilators into our everyday vocabulary. As we navigate through the murky waters of social media postings, podcasts, tweets, articles, and news feeds, we struggle to decipher what is real, what is accurate, what can be trusted. Between the months of March 2020 and June 2020, millions of articles, videos, and studies were generated and published for mass consumption about Coronavirus. Amidst all this, is a plethora of conspiracy theories, fake news, and profiteering agendas that further prevent the average media consumer from really understanding what SARS-Coronavirus-2 (COVID-19) is, how it affects the human body, and its pathogenesis.
As of July 2020, we do not have a cure for COVID-19, we do not know if antibody treatments will help prevent reacquiring the virus, we do not know if the strain of COVID-19 is changing or mutating. What we do know as of July 12, 2020 is that there are over 12 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, and over 500,000 COVID-19 related deaths. 1 These numbers continue to rise as testing increases and as people ignore proven methods to prevent disease transmission and spread. It is important to note that COVID-19 is one of 20 epidemic diseases declared by the World Health Organization.2 This frightening list includes the seasonal influenza virus, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and Ebola Virus. Seeing this list begs the question, why? Why is there an abundance of epidemic diseases? Are human practices and behaviors related to the emergence of these diseases? And, if so, is there a link to this and our changing environment, land-use practices, and loss of species biodiversity? Have we, as caretakers of Earth, failed to keep the natural world in balance? This curriculum unit will explore these questions with a focus on habitat loss due to human impacted land-use change, the emergence of disease, and the need for solutions.
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