ABSTRACT
The recent emergence of life-threatening waves of viral zoonosis of increasing severity, culminating today with the COVID-19 pandemic, marks the beginning of an era that might be the last before the ultimate disappearance of human beings. Throughout history, plagues threatened human survival. The Roman Empire was struck from about 166 to 189 A.D. by a smallpox pandemic known as “the Antonine plague” claiming the lives of half of the population of the Empire including the emperor Marcus Aurelius and contributing to the socioeconomic decline of the Western Roman Empire until its fall in 476 A.D. The zoonotic bacterium Yersinia pestis accounted for two major plagues in the Middle Ages: “the Justinian plague” (6th century) and the “Black Death” (14th century) claiming the lives of millions. The Spanish flu that followed World War I due to a zoonotic Influenza A (H1N1) virus made more than 20 million victims. For the last about 50 years, novel life-threatening zoonotic viruses have emerged and spread globally including the human immunodeficiency virus, the Ebola virus, the Zika virus, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and today the ignominious severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which according to the WHO has infected so far 124 million people, caused 2.72 million deaths, and paralyzes the whole world as never seen before.
