Question:

From SARS to MERS and COVID-19,it seems that we are at increasing risk from emerging infectious diseases. Why is this so? Any hints from that — like how humans should co-exist with nature?

Tang: This is not an area with which I am very familiar. Obviously these diseases are all passed from animals to humans. Recently, they seemed to have occurred rather often. One possible reason may be our more frequent and closer contact with animals. Another reason is probably our advances in laboratory science, which have made discovery of such diseases easier and quicker. There might well have been many small outbreaks of new infectious diseases in the long history of mankind, but we just did not discover them before they completely disappeared.