Zero Guarantee Warmer Weather Will Dampen COVID-19; Warmer Winters May Make Next Flu Seasons Worse
President Trump assured the American public that the onset of warmer weather could halt the spread of the coronavirus. But experts caution there's no evidence to support that idea. His assertion raises new questions about the role temperatures have on infectious diseases as Earth gets warmer. The impacts of climate change on the coronavirus are unknown, but research related to other illnesses suggest that the risk of pandemics is growing as rising temperatures ignite animal migrations and other changes.
The COVID-19 virus continues to spread even as the first hints of spring begin to appear across the Northern Hemisphere. It's true that in temperate parts of the world, like the United States, Europe and much of Asia, flu season tends to spike in the winter and drop off in the spring. And some other types of coronaviruses, which have been around longer and been better studied than COVID-19, have also exhibited seasonal patterns. But COVID-19, being a novel disease, still holds more questions than answers. Scientists aren't sure what kinds of patterns to expect as it spreads or how it might be affected by weather and climate.
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But limited studies have suggested climate change could have other effects, as well.
A paper in 2013 found that unusually warm winters tend to be followed by earlier, more severe flu seasons the next year. The researchers suggest this is because fewer people come down with the flu during warmer winters, leaving their immune systems more vulnerable the following year. Another paper, published earlier this year, suggested that rapid swings in the weather may also make flu epidemics worse.
Flu certainly isn't representative of all directly transmitted diseases. But the research on flu, one of the most common and well-studied viruses in the world, helps demonstrate the challenges of parsing out the influence of climate change. Much of the research on common diseases, like the flu, is still focused on how climate and weather affect the disease today — which is the first step to understanding how changes in the climate might affect the disease in the future. The same foundation will be necessary for scientists to make predictions about the future of emerging diseases, like COVID-19. "We really need to have that understanding before we can think about climate change," Baker said. "There are still a lot of open questions in terms of how is climate important."
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1062554121
