Not eating meat does not eliminate the spread of pathogens, that is true. But if we significantly reduce our meat consumption, then there would be less need for the commercial meat industry. These factories over pump their animals with antibiotics, hormones, feed dead cow to cows, dead chicken to chickens, slaughterhouses filled with animal urine and feces, thus are breeding grounds for bacteria and viruses leading to these super pathogens that humans eventually come into contact with. And what about the animal waste that pollute nearby rivers and streams?
With less need of a meat industry, it would reduce market growth and lead to less human to animal contact thus greatly reducing these zoonotic diseases currently wiping us out.
The 1918 flu (Spanish flu), which infected over a quarter of the world's population and killed 50 million people, was caused by a H1N1 virus that historians say likely originated on a Kansas chicken farm.
Covid-19 was passed to humans in a wet market which only existed because humans exploit animals in the first place.
It is not just about the physical consumption, it is the fact that we create environments where contact between human and animals are increased exponentially. Because contact is increased exponentially, risk is increased exponentially.