A researcher takes a sample from an animal. Credit: CDC Global via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us how vulnerable we are to deadly infectious diseases. How we got here has been decades in the making, with plenty of warning signs along the way, from SARS to MERS to Ebola to Zika. And we’ve known for a long time what drives zoonotic diseases to spill over into humans: the wildlife trade, intensive agriculture, deforestation, to name a few factors. As human populations grow and demands for food and natural resources increase, we must anticipate more deadly pandemics, leading to more lockdowns, more fear, and more disruption, economic and otherwise, in our lives. We must remember that we interact with the natural world everyday by breathing air, drinking water, and eating plants and animals.