Student Worksheet

Writing Informatively & Debunking Myths - Activity Instructions

Students will...

You will learn to use specialised vocabulary
You will learn how authors use synonyms to develop arguments and ideas
You will use close-reading strategies to identify information in a text and respond to it
You will learn how to use visual processing strategies to break down information and explain it in a new way.

Students can...

You can correctly define key words
You can categorise vocabulary into groups
You can answer true and false questions by reading closely
You can break down a short description and depict it through imagery and words.

READ THE CONVERSATION ARTICLE BELOW

Coronavirus: three misconceptions about how animals transmit diseases debunked

Olivier Restif, University of Cambridge

As global COVID-19 cases top two million, it’s humbling to remember that it all started when one person got infected by one wild animal. We may never find out precisely where or when it occurred, nor the animal which was responsible. But we do know that these “spillover events” are the starting points of many outbreaks, from influenza to HIV and from SARS to COVID-19.

Zoonotic diseases are caused by pathogens which originate in other animal species. Some diseases, such as rabies, cause sporadic outbreaks, often self-contained but deadly and traumatising for the communities they infect. Others manage to spread worldwide and become pandemic, circulating in the global population. Some are repeat offenders that re-emerge from animal hosts in a mutated form every few decades – think influenza, plague and cholera.

Many others are now part of our burden of endemic diseases, such as measles, mumps or HIV. The coronavirus causing COVID-19 is closely related to those that caused the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) pandemic in 2003. Despite speculation, it’s too early to tell whether COVID-19 will disappear within a year or stay with us permanently like the flu.

The novel coronavirus has been linked to wild animals carrying a coronavirus and sold in a Wuhan wet market for food. EPA-EFE/ALEX PLAVEVSKI

Either way, we can expect new strains of coronavirus to spill over from wildlife in the future. Countless pathogens jump across animal species on a daily basis – most of the time with no visible effect. But increasingly, these pathogens are taking advantage of the new opportunities that humans have created as they reshape the natural environment. In this fraught atmosphere, it’s natural for misconceptions to circulate, so here’s what we know about how new diseases jump from animals to people.

Read more: Coronavirus: where do new viruses come from?

1. Bush meat and wet markets

It’s often assumed that close contact with wild animals is necessary for zoonotic outbreaks like Ebola or COVID-19 to occur. Activities like hunting, butchering and trading wild animal meat for human consumption carry a high risk of exposure to pathogens, but we don’t know how often they actually cause diseases. Bats are popular game in several African and Asian countries, where some species weigh over 300g and roost in their thousands in trees. As a result, bat hunters are at particular risk of infection, although there is little evidence to suggest hunters themselves may have been the source of past Ebola outbreaks.

In some countries, live animals destined for human consumption are traditionally sold in wet markets, potentially bringing zoonotic viruses from the forest into towns. But footage of exotic wild animals, sometimes endangered, sold live on overcrowded market stalls, misrepresent a niche trade as mainstream activity.

Surveys in China and Vietnam have shown that wild meat is mainly eaten in restaurants, mostly from wild pigs, goats, deer and birds, all of which are commonly farmed – not unlike what happens in Europe. As for bats, which are sold in their tens of thousands in Ghana, they are already dead, eviscerated and smoked by the time they reach market stalls, hence posing a very low risk of infection to consumers.

Read more: Ebola: bats get a bad rap when it comes to spreading diseases

2. Vectors

More common routes of spillover do not require direct contact with animals at all. Many emerging diseases are transmitted by biting insects that act as vectors between animal host species. For example, Lyme disease, caused by bacteria found in wild mammals and transmitted to humans by ticks, has been increasing in North America and Europe in the last 30 years. Although this increase is often thought to be driven by deer hunting, studies suggest that the growing abundance of small mammals may be spreading the disease as their natural predators decline.

Ticks can transmit the bacteria that causes Lyme disease when they bite humans. KPixMining/Shutterstock

Other pathogens are excreted in the urine or faeces of their animal host, contaminating drinking water or crops for humans and farm animals. This has been seen in Bangladesh, where bats drink from and urinate into vessels collecting palm sap, causing outbreaks of Nipah virus in local communities.

3. Domestic animals

Although wild animals transmit zoonotic viruses, people are much more frequently in contact with domestic animals, creating ample opportunities for disease spillover. Poultry can spread bird flu, and there have been sporadic (and often deadly) outbreaks of H5N1 or H7N9 strains in the last 20 years, leading to mass culls in farms.

Although less lethal, bacteria such as salmonella and campylobacter, commonly found in farm animals, cause thousands of cases of food poisoning in the UK alone. Even normally harmless bacteria may acquire antibiotic resistance genes in farms that use lots of antibiotics. Outside Europe, antibiotics are often added to animal feed as growth promoters, potentially helping to incubate multidrug-resistant bacteria in livestock.

How to prevent zoonotic disease outbreaks

There are no simple solutions to prevent zoonotic outbreaks, but researchers in our Bat-One-Health consortium are studying how to reinforce three particular lines of defence.

Preserving ecosystems and restoring natural habitats can ensure animals don’t need to forage near where humans live. Risky behaviours that expose people to pathogens can be reduced – not by imposing harmful bans on wild meat – but through community engagement that’s respectful of different livelihoods and cultural practices. Most importantly, governments must invest in public health and surveillance where they are needed most.

Understanding how new viruses make the jump from animals to humans can help lower the risk of future pandemics, but it will mean dispelling misconceptions about where most transmission occurs and avoiding knee jerk reactions.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Part A: Find The Answers

Step 1.

The following specialised vocabulary is used in the article. Match the word to its definition by writing the appropriate letter next to the word. Use the sentences to help you to figure out the meaning of the word.

Word	Definitions
Transmit - “Although wild animals transmit zoonotic viruses, people are much more frequently in contact with domestic animals.”	1. An organism that spreads disease because it picks it up from one host and transfers it to another.
Vector - “Many emerging diseases are transmitted by biting insects that act as vectors between animal host species."	2. Something that people believe that is actually incorrect.
Pathogen - “Other pathogens are excreted in the urine or faeces of their animal host.”	3. Something that causes disease.
Misconception - “Three misconceptions about how animals transmit diseases debunked.”	4. To transfer, to move from one to another.

Step 2.

The authors use lots of synonyms to express whether or not something is evidence-based or an assumption. Look at the following list and try to categorise each word into the table:

myths
studies suggest
assumption
we know
little evidence
misrepresentation
it's often assumed
researchers are studying
.

Step 3.

Write a short summary of one of the sections of the article. Include three to five of the words from Steps 1 and 2.

.

Part B: Putting It All Together

Step 1.

Read the below statements and determine (based on information in the article) if they are true or false. If they are false statements, rewrite them to make them true.

Step 2.

Pick one fact that surprised you from the article. Explain why it surprised you.

Start A Conversation

Step 1.

Select a particular explanation or description to bring to life through imagery. This isn’t about how good you are at art, but simply about showing the key ideas in a sentence or explanation in a visual way. First you need to choose a short explanation or description and complete the planner below:

Step 2.

Draw your picture/s. Re-read the sentence and check if you have conveyed everything you want to. You may want to label the picture.

Step 3.

Share your image with an audience - you can send it to a friend or classmate or show it to a family member. Ask them:

What do you think this image is trying to show?
Does the image raise any questions for you?
Do you need more information to understand the image?
Read them the sentence the image is based on. Ask them if they recognised the details from the sentence in your image.

Taking It Further

Step 1.

You are going to create a poster sharing essential information about zoonotic diseases and how they spread. Re-read the article and decide on six to ten facts you think should be included in the poster/ series of posters.

Step 2.

Consider what imagery you can include in the poster to visually explain your ideas. You may wish to incorporate your images from the last stage and/or create new ones.

Step 3.

Check the facts in your poster. Read over it carefully.

Step 4.

Publish your poster - share it with Cool Australia on social media.

Debunking Myths

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