It is no surprise that communities adjacent to exploited rainforests, with their wild animal markets, are the first affected by novel diseases, such as Ebola, HIV, Marburg, SARS, and, most recently, COVID-19. Most human infectious diseases have a zoonotic origin, even if most of these pathogens made the transfer from animals to humans many generations ago.

Nautilus, "The Superorganism That Created the Pandemic"