Unclean Animals & Viruses: The Strange Cause of Pandemics
Are unclean animals and deadly diseases linked? Discover the cause of the 1918 Flu, COVID-19, Ebola, HIV, and the Bubonic Plague. Unclean animals were never meant to be eaten or handled.
The True Cause of Pandemics: Unclean Animals, the Environmental Janitors
The link between unclean animals and disease is written in the history of the world’s worst pandemics. People wonder why the most terrifying plagues follow the same pattern of human behavior. We must look at the “junk data” on our plates to stop the next system crash.
Major health disasters like the Spanish Flu and COVID-19 trace back to the unclean animals. These creatures were made to be environmental janitors, not food. Scientists are now catching up to ancient wisdom that warned us about these high-risk animals many centuries ago.
The Bible and Pandemics
Imagine a world where we respected the “GIGO” rule and kept these deadly germs out of our homes. When you understand the link between unclean animals and disease, you can better protect your family. You can avoid the next “garbage in, garbage out” cycle by learning the rules of the game.
Read on to discover the facts about five deadly diseases and the Bible commands in Leviticus 11. Let’s respect the environmental janitors, and learn the lessons that history and Scripture are trying to teach us.
The “Junk In, Garbage Out” Reality Check
Look at the recent COVID-19 pandemic. We can point fingers at Hubei, China, all we want, but let’s be honest. COVID-19 did not fall out of the sky like a freak bolt of lightning. This nightmare has a history, a long, messy, and avoidable one. If you think our health crises appear overnight, you haven’t been paying attention.
Back in the 1960s, computer people had a saying: “Junk In, Junk Out.” They called it GIGO, Garbage In, Garbage Out. It is a simple rule for computers. If you feed a machine trash data, don’t act surprised when the result is a glitch. Your body is the most complex machine you will ever own, and we have been feeding it “garbage data” for centuries.
We are talking about a long history of eating or handling “unclean” animals, creatures that were never meant for a dinner plate. The link between these animals and disease is old, and the cost has been written in blood and fever for generations. Yet we still act shocked when the “garbage results” show up in our lungs and our hospitals. Humanity is a slow learner, but nature does not care. It simply enforces the rules.
Let’s look at the actual plagues we invited into our homes by ignoring the “GIGO” of our own habits.
1. The Great Bubonic Plague: A Lesson in Filth and Consequence
Let’s start with the big one. The Great Bubonic Plague was no polite little flu. It was a horror that tore through Europe, China, and Egypt in the mid-1300s. The death toll was staggering. An estimated 25 to 50 million people died, and about a third of Europe vanished into mass graves.
People were terrified, and when people are scared, they look for someone to blame. Some called it the judgment of God. Others turned on their neighbors. In one of the most shameful moments in history, Jews were falsely accused of poisoning wells and were killed by the thousands (torchweb.com).
Here is the hard-earned lesson. Many accounts say Jewish communities suffered less in some places. Some even accused them of spreading the plague. A likely reason was simple hygiene. Their laws called for washing after contact with dead animals and unclean things (see Leviticus 11:24–40; 17:15–16). Historians and scientists are still debating the real issues, but the rule is plain: keep the garbage off your skin.
The Black Death, the Rats, and the Fleas
The plague was not a mystery. It was spread through the gutters. The germ was Yersinia pestis, a deadly bacterium carried by fleas. And where did those fleas live? On rats, one of the “unclean” animals of the Bible (see Leviticus 11:29, 41–43). Leviticus warns that even touching an unclean creature makes a person unclean (Leviticus 11:24–28).
Rats came off the trading ships from Central Asia, bringing the “junk” into the heart of every home in Italy and beyond. We let the scavengers into our kitchens, and in return they gave us a century of death. When you ignore the warnings about unclean animals, real life shows up and hits you hard.
2. COVID-19: The Modern “GIGO” Nightmare
Let’s talk about the elephant, or rather the bat, in the room. If the Bubonic Plague was the “GIGO” lesson of the 1300s, COVID-19 is our modern lesson. We like to think we are so advanced, with fast internet and high-rise offices. But nature reminds us that we are still under the same laws of biology.
The story most of us heard started in a “wet market” in Wuhan. Early cases were linked to the Huanan market, where live wild animals such as raccoon dogs and civets were sold in crowded cages. Both walk on paws, and the Bible calls animals that walk on paws unclean (Leviticus 11:27). Scientists also believe the virus family behind COVID-19 came from bats, which are listed as unclean in Leviticus 11:19. The exact path is still debated, but every theory points back to unclean animals.
Unclean Animals and Viruses: Exotic Foods from the Wild
Bats carry many viruses and are not harmed by them. But when we drag unclean animals into a crowded market, a breeding ground for “garbage data,” we are begging for a system crash. These animals are not dinner. They are biological hazards.
When we hunt, sell, and eat unclean animals, we are not just getting meat. We are inviting a hidden threat into our bodies. The link between unclean animals and disease suggests that COVID-19 did not “just happen.” It looks like the “junk out” of a “junk in” lifestyle. We crossed a line that was drawn long ago, and the result was a global pandemic that left us breathless and broken.
3. Ebola: The High Cost of Breaking the Rules
Ebola is one of the sharpest warnings the natural world has ever given us. It was first found in 1976 near the Ebola River in the Congo, and it did not appear out of thin air. It was invited.
The virus is linked to the hunting and eating of unclean animals, especially apes and bats. Bats are believed to be its hiding place, and human outbreaks have followed the handling of sick or dead animals. We call these animals “unclean” for a reason. When we force the connection, the result is suffering that no hospital is ready to handle.
The danger is also growing more complex. In 2018, scientists reported a new Ebola-type virus, called Bombali, in free-tailed bats in Sierra Leone. No human illness has been linked to it so far. These bats roost in the roofs of homes and drop their waste where people live and eat.
We keep touching the hot stove and acting shocked when we get burned. Ebola shows that nature does not care about our convenience. It is time to stop being careless with what we eat and handle, and to respect the boundaries that keep us alive.
4. HIV/AIDS: The Silent “GIGO” Crash
If you want to see how a “junk input” mistake can grow into a global disaster, look at HIV. It is a slow-motion train wreck that has been building for over a century. Long before it made headlines in the 1980s, the “junk” was already at work in the shadows.
Scientists trace the roots of HIV back to the early 1900s. A blood sample from the Belgian Congo in 1959 is one of the oldest known cases. By the time American doctors first reported it in 1981, the virus had already crossed oceans and borders, quietly destroying lives from the inside. But it did not start in a lab or a city. It started in the forest.
Researchers have traced HIV-1 group M, the strain behind the global pandemic, to chimpanzees in Cameroon and later gorillas. This is the hard truth: we took a creature that was never meant for our table, and we brought it into our bodies. Whether through hunting or handling “bushmeat,” we crossed a line with a primate that carries its own deadly viruses. Chimpanzees walk on paws and hands, which the Bible places in the unclean group (Leviticus 11:27). We triggered a crash the world is still trying to recover from.
5. The 1918 “Spanish Flu” and the Janitors of the Earth
The 1918 “Spanish Flu” was the deadliest flu in history. This was no bad season of the sniffles. The H1N1 pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including about 675,000 in the United States. In the study “Origin and Evolution of the 1918 ‘Spanish’ Influenza Virus Hemagglutinin Gene” by Ann H. Reid and others, the trail leads to the oldest known classical swine flu strain.
Pigs are unclean animals (see Leviticus 11:7; Deuteronomy 14:8). Some researchers also point to birds as a source of the virus, and the full answer is still open. But the swine link is one of the strongest findings, and it fits the same pattern.
When you look at the biggest killers, COVID-19, Ebola, HIV, and the Spanish Flu, they share a common thread. Each is linked to animals that the Bible calls unclean, creatures never meant for a human dinner plate (see Leviticus 11; 20:25; Deuteronomy 14).
Stay Away from the Environmental Janitors
Bats, snakes, pigs, chimpanzees, monkeys, and rats are not food. They carry some of the worst viruses known to man. Many of them serve a different, vital purpose: they are our environmental janitors. Look at how unclean animals work. Squids feed on dead creatures in the sea. Owls hunt rats and other pests in the forest, and some also eat dead animals. Sea Shepherd should expand their coverage in protecting the environment to shrimps, eels, mussels, owls.
Shrimps, crabs, and eels feed on dead matter and waste in our rivers and seas. Mussels filter the water along our shores, taking in tiny bits of waste and keeping the water clearer.
Some scientists think that fewer shellfish may mean more harmful algae blooms, such as red tide. In these ways, unclean animals help clean up our ecosystems, our forests, our fields, and our towns. It is a simple question of logic: if we eat the janitors, who is left to clean the earth?
The history of unclean animals and disease shows that when we ignore their role, we pay a heavy price. The simple math is: virus in, virus out, pandemic. Had we listened to the original instructions, we could have avoided much of this pain.
As Revelation 18:4 warns: “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive her plagues.” It is time to stop being stubborn and learn from these mistakes (see 2 Chronicles 7:13–14).
Frequently Asked Questions on Unclean Animals and Disease
1. What is the link between unclean animals and disease?
History shows that many of the deadliest outbreaks, from the 1300s to today, are tied to animals the Bible calls “unclean,” through eating them or handling them.
2. Why do unclean animals carry such dangerous germs?
Many of these creatures are scavengers and ecosystem cleaners. They can carry heavy loads of germs that become deadly when passed to humans.
3. How did the 1918 Spanish Flu involve unclean animals?
Studies trace the 1918 H1N1 virus to classical swine flu, which links the pandemic to pigs. Some researchers also point to birds.
4. Is there a connection between HIV and biblical health laws?
HIV came from chimpanzees in West Central Africa, through hunting and handling. Chimpanzees fall in the unclean group of animals that walk on paws.
5. Why are bats and primates called “biological vaults”?
Bats and primates carry deep-seated viruses linked to Ebola and COVID-19. They were made to live in the wild, not to be human food.
6. What does GIGO mean for global health?
“Garbage In, Garbage Out” means that if we put “unclean” things into our lives, we should expect bad results, including disease.
7. How can we lower the risk of future pandemics?
By respecting the role of environmental janitors and avoiding unclean animals, we can greatly lower the risk of diseases jumping from animals to people.
What Is Your Next Move?
Stop playing Russian roulette with your health. If you are ready to stop the “junk in” cycle and protect your family, subscribe to our newsletter for more health insights today.
Discover more from Independent Christian Church of God
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

