1.Frozen zombie viruses will be released by melting glaciers caused by climate change. Fake or not?
The internet has been buzzing about a consequence of climate change that, while isn’t as visible as stranded polar bears and wildfires, is just as alarming. Zombie viruses. Bacteria and viruses that have been preserved for centuries in glaciers are coming back to life as the Arctic’s permafrost starts to thaw! There are lots of TikTok videos about the climate crisis that went viral where the creators state that melting ice caps could expose humans to ancient viruses still able to infect their targets, and some of them that the zombie viruses are already here. The most popular TikTok video, reaching nearly 2M views, was removed by the creator, after being virally spread all over the world in December 2022, but not before it created a bit of panic.
Many more can be still found here and here
With the fear and anxiety triggered by COVID-19, imagining a whole Pandora’s box of diseases sounds like something out of a horror film. But will the continued melting of ice caps due to human-caused climate change really release long-dormant bacteria and viruses that’ll infect us all?
HOW CAN WE VERIFY THIS?
According to an article from Smithsonian Magazine, experts found that man-made climate change is causing glaciers around the world to shrink and release microbes and viruses that have been trapped for up to hundreds of thousands of years. According to the article, in 2015, scientists from the U.S. and China drilled into a glacier and found evidence of ancient viruses. And 28 of these viruses were new to science. According to an article from National Geographic, in 2014, another study found that a 30,000 year old “giant virus” from permafrost was still able to infect its target.
WHAT ARE OTHER SOURCES SAYING?
However, according to a research article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this giant virus is only able to attack amoebas, which are single-celled organisms. Not humans.
KEYWORD SEARCH
The TikTok named two specific diseases that are cause for concern: anthrax and the smallpox virus. Using those terms to refine our keyword search brought up this article from NPR. NPR reported that back in 2016, melting permafrost in northern Siberia thawed a decades-old deer carcass that was infected with anthrax. This is thought to have caused an outbreak that hospitalized 96 people and killed 2,000 reindeer. The article also states that there’s probably smallpox and the bubonic plague also buried in Siberia. However, Michael Zimmerman, a paleopathologist at the University of Pennsylvania, also told NPR that “we’re dealing with organisms that have been frozen for hundreds of years, so I don’t think they would come back to life.” And then added that a resurgence of viruses like smallpox would be “extremely unlikely.” The Washington Post also wrote about this in December 2022. (See more) quoting that an extinct virus “seems like a low risk compared to the large numbers of viruses that are circulating among vertebrates around the world, and that have proven to be real threats in the past, and where similar events could happen in the future, as we still lack a framework for recognizing those ahead of time,” said Colin Parrish, a virologist at Cornell University who is also the president of the American Society for Virology.
FAKE OR NOT?
t’s true that scientists have found that within melting permafrost there are ancient viruses and bacteria, some previously unknown to science. However, most of these viruses can only infect amoebas. And while there might be some frozen viruses preserved in permafrost out there that could once infect humans, experts agree that it’s very unlikely for those types of viruses to come back to life. The TikTok is accurate, but experts say we don’t need to panic just yet.
