As COVID-19 continues to infect people around the world and Monkey Pox has reemerged in continents previously unaffected, understanding and managing the conditions that precede the emergence of viral diseases in our population has become urgent.
Throughout history, both new and reemerging infectious diseases afflicting humans have been caused by pathogens that were passed from nonhuman animals. Genetically, viruses are extraordinarily agile — a trait that can result in jumping from nonhuman to human hosts when the challenges to infect the new species are surmountable. Viral species switching from nonhumans to humans occurs when the following triad of changes converge: The virus undergoes a genetic mutation leading to increased virulence in a previously inhospitable ecosystem, the environment presents an advantageous transmission route, and a human host with less effective immune protection is encountered.