Melting glaciers threaten to release diseases “that are thousands of years old,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) cautions in an Instagram video warning of the dangers of climate change.
“They going to get into our water” – and mankind is going to be unprepared for these ancient, unknown diseases – Ocasio-Cortez says:
“There are a lot of diseases that are frozen in some of these glaciers that scientists fear that there is a potential that a lot of diseases could escape these melted glaciers.”
“Things that were frozen for thousands of years, and that they’re going to get into our water, and that humans could contract them, and they’re going to be diseases that are thousands of years old that have vectors that we are not prepared for, that we have never seen. Um…and so that’s a concern.”
Ocasio-Cortez adds that, even if she’s wrong about the glacier diseases, migrating mosquitoes fleeing climate change will bring diseases “and a whole slew of other things” to the U.S.:
“Even if there are no diseases frozen at all in these glaciers, you have diseases that are spread by mosquitoes, and now mosquitoes are starting to fly further north that carry diseases like malaria, and a whole slew of other things.”
