Town Crier “Briefs from the Region” (1) – 1/4/21
Montana State University epidemiologist Raina Plowright was recently featured in a Rolling Stone article that explored the relationship between pandemics like COVID-19 and climate change. “How Climate Change is Ushering in a New Pandemic Era,” features Plowright, an associate professor from MSU’s College of Agriculture’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology and a trained veterinarian, as well as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading expert in infectious diseases. It explains how diseases move from animals to humans, an issue that is significantly escalated by a warming planet—as a species’ ecosystem shrinks, disease between them becomes more transmissible. According to the article, we could see many more pandemics, and much more severe ones in our future.