Elite priorities: Why social, animal, and environmental justice remains essential with COVID-19

See update for March 16, 2023, at end of post.


It’s not the sort of thing I expect an omnivore to say:

This [the novel coronavirus] is not nature’s revenge, we did it to ourselves. The solution is to have a much more respectful approach to nature, which includes dealing with climate change and all the rest.[1]


Thomas Lovejoy is mostly commenting on the nonhuman animal to human animal interface, one that humans have imposed upon the natural world, particularly with so-called “wet markets” in which live wild animals are sold for meat. Apparently, in the Guardian‘s paraphrase, “[s]cientists are discovering two to four new viruses are created every year as a result of human infringement on the natural world, and any one of those could turn into a pandemic.”[2]

Zoonotic diseases are nothing new. Jared Diamond considers them a part of the story in which western (European and North American) societies came to colonize the world and it is important to recognize that disease comes not only from wild but as well from farmed animals.[3] But here’s the twist that fully engages vegetarian ecofeminism:

Experts are divided about how to regulate the vast trade in animals, with many concerned the poorest are most at risk from a crackdown. Urgent action on the wildlife trade is clearly needed, said Dr Amy Dickman, a conservation biologist from the University of Oxford, but she was “alarmed” by calls for indiscriminate bans on the wildlife trade.

She is one of more than 250 signatories of an open letter to the World Health Organization and United Nations Environment Programme saying any transition must contribute to – and not detract from – the livelihoods of the world’s most vulnerable people, many of whom depend on wild resources for survival.[4]

These experts are concerned that a ban would simply push the trade onto the black market, potentially making it even more dangerous.[5]

Which is to say, not only do we need to be taking care of nonhuman animals but the human ones as well. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that while it is still early and the pandemic has a long ways to go before running its course,[6] elites simply cannot wait to get back to treating so-called “essential workers” the way they always have, as expendable workers, that their thirst for austerity, meaning yet more social safety net cuts, even as these render testing and treatment inaccessible for the poor and have made self-quarantines and social distancing impracticable for the poor, is unquenchable.[7] And that’s in the U.S. Never mind about those indigenous people in Africa and Asia depending on wet markets for their survival.[8]

Vegetarian ecofeminism, which combines animal rights and anarchist theory, posits that the power relationships among human animals are of the same essential character as and are in fact indistinguishable from those we impose upon nonhuman animals and upon the environment, that if we seek to remedy social inequality among humans, we must remedy it as well toward the environment and toward nonhuman animals.[9] We are already seeing with environmental devastation and the climate crisis how our attitude toward the environment threatens our own survival. Now, with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, we are seeing something similar with the other two links.

We have to treat each other better. We have to treat nonhuman animals better. We have to treat the environment better.

And that elites refuse to move in this direction, even to avoid human extinction, but rather insist on moving in the opposite direction, informs us as to their priorities.


Update, March 15, 2023: Somebody, Michael Worobey, did his own research. And concluded that the Wuhan wet market was indeed the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll probably never know specifically which species passed the disease onto humans because testing of the animals was not done.[10] I’m far outside my field here, but at least the way Karen Kaplan presents it, this seems like pretty solid work.

The wet markets seem particularly egregious, but I have previously addressed implications of the zoonotic hypothesis.[11] And it’s not even remotely like COVID-19 is the first disease to implicate our relationship with non-human animals.[12]

The trouble here is that, like with guns, a lot of politically-oriented toxic masculinity is bound up with that relationship. Even without that toxic masculinity, a particular notion of allegedly divinely-ordained “natural order”[13] is bound up in that relationship.

To challenge that relationship is to draw upon oneself a fury that too many vegan activists have already experienced.


Update, March 16, 2023: So. I had just reconciled myself to the idea that we might never know which nonhuman animal passed COVID-19 onto humans,[14] when here comes evidence suggesting it was raccoon dogs.[15]

[The zoonotic] hypothesis has been missing a key piece of proof: genetic evidence from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, showing that the virus had infected creatures for sale there.

This week, an international team of virologists, genomicists, and evolutionary biologists may have finally found crucial data to help fill that knowledge gap. A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019. It’s some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans, rather than in an accident among scientists experimenting with viruses.

“This really strengthens the case for a natural origin,” says Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University who wasn’t involved in the research. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist involved in the research, told me, “This is a really strong indication that animals at the market were infected. There’s really no other explanation that makes any sense.” . . .

Finding the genetic material of virus and mammal so closely co-mingled—enough to be extracted out of a single swab—isn’t perfect proof, [Seema] Lakdawala told me. “It’s an important step; I’m not going to diminish that,” she said. Still, the evidence falls short of, say, isolating SARS-CoV-2 from a free-ranging raccoon dog or, even better, uncovering a viral sample swabbed from a mammal for sale at Huanan from the time of the outbreak’s onset. That would be the virological equivalent of catching a culprit red-handed. But “you can never go back in time and capture those animals,” says Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. And to researchers’ knowledge, “raccoon dogs were not tested at the market and had likely been removed prior to the authorities coming in,” [Kristian] Andersen wrote to me in an email. He underscored that the findings, although an important addition, are not “direct evidence of infected raccoon dogs at the market.”[16]

But there’s also that other work,[17] which seems pretty convincing, and a lot of other work that precedes it.[18]

So, okay, I may yet be wrong. But the lab leak hypothesis is looking pretty fucking weak.[19] And the zoonotic hypothesis is looking pretty fucking strong.[20] This might be the best answer we can get.

And what I wrote before still stands:

The trouble here is that, like with guns, a lot of politically-oriented toxic masculinity is bound up in that relationship. Even without that toxic masculinity, a particular notion of allegedly divinely-ordained “natural order”[21] is bound up in that relationship.

To challenge that relationship is to draw upon oneself a fury that too many vegan activists have already experienced.[22]

So count on the argument continuing.

If this new level of scientific evidence does conclusively tip the origins debate toward the animal route, it will be, in one way, a major letdown. It will mean that SARS-CoV-2 breached our borders because we once again mismanaged our relationship with wildlife—that we failed to prevent this epidemic for the same reason we failed, and could fail again, to prevent so many of the rest.[23]

  1. [1]Thomas Lovejoy, quoted in Phoebe Weston, “‘We did it to ourselves’: scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic,” Guardian, April 25, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nature-pandemic-aoe
  2. [2]Phoebe Weston, “‘We did it to ourselves’: scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic,” Guardian, April 25, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nature-pandemic-aoe
  3. [3]Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).
  4. [4]Phoebe Weston, “‘We did it to ourselves’: scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic,” Guardian, April 25, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nature-pandemic-aoe
  5. [5]Phoebe Weston, “‘We did it to ourselves’: scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic,” Guardian, April 25, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nature-pandemic-aoe
  6. [6]Joe Pinsker, “The Four Possible Timelines for Life Returning to Normal,” Atlantic, March 30, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-social-distancing-over-back-to-normal/608752/; David Wallace-Wells, “We Are Probably Only One-Tenth of the Way Through This Pandemic,” New York, April 17, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/we-are-probably-only-a-tenth-of-the-way-through-the-pandemic.html
  7. [7]Anne Applebaum, “The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff,” Atlantic, March 15, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-showed-america-wasnt-task/608023/; David Blanchflower, “Pandemic Economics: ‘Much Worse, Very Quickly,” New York Review of Books, March 26, 2020, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/03/26/pandemic-economics-much-worse-very-quickly/; Kim Hart, “The coronavirus economy will devastate those who can least afford it,” Axios, March 23, 2020, https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-economy-layoffs-children-families-bad-d588cc93-ff26-4031-8be8-5654cce05a15.html; Zoë Hu, “A New Age of Destructive Austerity After the Coronavirus,” New Republic, April 23, 2020, https://newrepublic.com/article/157417/new-age-destructive-austerity-coronavirus; Sarah Jones, “Dear Rich People: Please Stop Hoarding Things,” New York, March 30, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/things-are-bad-and-rich-people-arent-helping.html; Hanna Kozlowska, “Coronavirus is revealing ugly truths about social structure in the US,” Quartz, March 14, 2020, https://qz.com/1818548/coronavirus-is-revealing-ugly-truths-about-social-structure-in-the-us/; Eric Levitz, “In the Age of the Coronavirus, Biden’s ‘Results’ Require Bernie’s ‘Revolution,’” New York, March 16, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/who-won-the-democratic-debate-between-biden-and-bernie-coronavirus.html; Tony Romm, “Uber drivers and other gig economy workers were promised unemployment benefits. It may be a long wait,” Washington Post, April 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/02/uber-airbnb-lyft-unemployment-coronavirus/; Jenny Schuetz, “America’s inequitable housing system is completely unprepared for coronavirus,” Brookings, March 12, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/03/12/americas-inequitable-housing-system-is-completely-unprepared-for-coronavirus/; Luke Taylor, “When coronavirus is behind us, will you still think of restaurant and bar workers?” Vox, March 21, 2020, https://www.vox.com/2020/3/21/21188210/coronavirus-restaurant-bar-workers-economy-service-industry; Reis Thebault, Andrew Ba Tran, and Vanessa Williams, “The coronavirus is infecting and killing black Americans at an alarmingly high rate,” Washington Post, April 7, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/07/coronavirus-is-infecting-killing-black-americans-an-alarmingly-high-rate-post-analysis-shows/; Funda Ustek-Spilda et al., “The untenable luxury of self-isolation,” New Internationalist, March 18, 2020, https://newint.org/features/2020/03/18/untenable-luxury-self-isolation; Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Denise Lu, and Gabriel J.X. Dance, “Location Data Says It All: Staying at Home During Coronavirus Is a Luxury,” New York Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/us/coronavirus-stay-home-rich-poor.html
  8. [8]Phoebe Weston, “‘We did it to ourselves’: scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic,” Guardian, April 25, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nature-pandemic-aoe
  9. [9]Greta Gaard, “Vegetarian Ecofeminism: A Review Essay,” Frontiers 23, no. 3 (2002): 117-146.
  10. [10]Karen Kaplan, “The problem with the lab leak theory,” Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/science/newsletter/2023-03-14/coronavirus-today-the-problem-with-the-lab-leak-theory-covid-wuhan-market-coronavirus-today
  11. [11]David Benfell, “Elite priorities: Why social, animal, and environmental justice remains essential with COVID-19,” Not Housebroken, April 26, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/04/26/elite-priorities-why-social-animal-and-environmental-justice-remains-essential-with-covid-19/
  12. [12]Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).
  13. [13]George Lakoff, Moral Politics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002).
  14. [14]Karen Kaplan, “The problem with the lab leak theory,” Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/science/newsletter/2023-03-14/coronavirus-today-the-problem-with-the-lab-leak-theory-covid-wuhan-market-coronavirus-today
  15. [15]Katherine J. Wu, “The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic,” Atlantic, March 16, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/
  16. [16]Katherine J. Wu, “The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic,” Atlantic, March 16, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/
  17. [17]Karen Kaplan, “The problem with the lab leak theory,” Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/science/newsletter/2023-03-14/coronavirus-today-the-problem-with-the-lab-leak-theory-covid-wuhan-market-coronavirus-today
  18. [18]Katherine J. Wu, “The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic,” Atlantic, March 16, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/
  19. [19]Karen Kaplan, “The problem with the lab leak theory,” Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/science/newsletter/2023-03-14/coronavirus-today-the-problem-with-the-lab-leak-theory-covid-wuhan-market-coronavirus-today
  20. [20]Katherine J. Wu, “The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic,” Atlantic, March 16, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/
  21. [21]George Lakoff, Moral Politics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002).
  22. [22]David Benfell, “Zoonotic hypothesis for the origin of COVID-19 affirmed,” Irregular Bullshit, March 15, 2023, https://disunitedstates.com/2023/03/15/zoonotic-hypothesis-for-the-origin-of-covid-19-affirmed/
  23. [23]Katherine J. Wu, “The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic,” Atlantic, March 16, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/