FEATURE STORY | BY JEFFREY SPITZ COHAN
Moving Toward a Pandemic-Free World
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OVID-19 has been a miserable, even tragic, experience. Another killer pandemic? It’s certainly not something we want to experience again anytime soon, or ever. I know San Diego, where I grew up, has suffered greatly at the hands, or spikes, of the coronavirus. But here’s the good news. If we’re serious about greatly reducing the chances of a second, quite possibly worse, pandemic, the solution is simple and comes with wonderful side effects. A transition to plant-based diets on the individual level, and away from animal agriculture on the societal level, will not only help prevent another pandemic — it will improve your health, spare animals from suffering, reduce environmental degradation, and even lessen world hunger. And it will move you into alignment with Judaism’s most noble values. THE ORIGIN OF EPIDEMICS
A little history is in order. 26
L’CHAIM SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE • SEPTEMBER 2020
Throughout most of human history, there were no epidemic diseases. “No one got the flu, not even the common cold, until about 10,000 years ago,” said Dr. Michael Greger, author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching. What happened 10,000 years ago? We began domesticating animals. “When we brought domesticated animals to the barnyard, they brought their diseases with them,” Greger said. Measles, for instance, has killed 200 million people over the course of history. It entered into the human population from cattle, in the form of the rinderpest virus. The flu, which takes the form of many viruses, originally came from domesticated ducks. Even the common cold came from camels. In the mid-20th century, scientists developed vaccines to slow and even stop the spread of some of the worst infectious diseases. Measles. Polio. Smallpox.
