Are there any infectious disease experts who can give a clear overview of our risk for global pandemics in the near future?
Are there any infectious disease experts who can give a clear overview of our risk for global pandemics in the near future?
Given the engineered collapse of USAID and the NIH in the USA, as well as their turning away from WHO support, what are the most likely future scenarios? Can the other developed nations mount a credible pandemic response without the resources of the USA?
I am especially interested in global perspectives because pathogens don’t need passports. How might this impact the global order?
My magic eightball says, "Signs point to yes" - we're in a global state where every winter there are pretty significant health risks to flying and outbreaks... if you don't know someone with long COVID then you're extremely lucky, it's really degenerative in some people I love.
The difference is that if something like those first two COVID winters happened again it's unlikely we'd see any sort of mass order (and government mandate to allow remote work) in America like we saw before. But up here in Vancouver most jobs that can be done remotely have now shifted to that and people avoid going to crowded places when an outbreak is happening. You'll often just see Skytrain extremely vacant if people have heard a flu is going around.
Countries outside the US have invested independently in better staffed research teams to fight annual outbreaks and sane countries have rolling mailing lists (I got an invitation two weeks ago for my next free shot!) about when to top up your flu/covid/rsv vaccine. If the US wants to be a breeding ground for outbreaks we can't stop them, but we're trying to insulate Canada as well as possible and working with the EU to do so.
I despair of any insulation of Canada. Too much daily ground traffic across that huge unguarded border. Cancelling flights won’t make much difference there. North America is one giant petri dish sharing disease like a family full of young children.
But I am glad the other nations have begun to strengthen their systems too. Humanity will survive in some form, pandemics can’t wipe us all out.
Americans take credit for many things where their contribution is null. If anything, we'll probably be safer 5y down the line because there will be less people trying to profit from pandemic potential diseases (tamiflu much...)
I still don’t understand the obsession with tamiflu. The data is such that the average reduction in illness time is 16 hours, if and only if you take it within the first 48hrs of showing symptoms.
And yet it’s both pushed and asked for well outside those parameters at great expense. It’s expensive, $75-150, depending, not always covered by insurance, and it’s not unusual for it to make people feel worse.
My running theory it’s the same impetus that has people screaming (sometimes literally) for antibiotics for colds, some of whom genuinely believe it helps. That and pharma selling a thing.
Just wait til the CDC is gutted while at the precipice of a bird flu pandemic.
I can't speak for the political aspects.
CSIS has a interesting talk on the politics of global health https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnErbYQ55kY
However, the global metabolic crisis is a huge risk factor for pandemics. People with compromised immune systems are far more likely to be affected by or disabled by global pandemics. In the USA something like 8% of adults have ideal metabolic health, that means 92% have a compromised immune system
So the field is ripe for harvest then. :(
I’m trying to prepare myself for things to get really bad really quickly. Pandemics are the Achilles heel of complex global societies that forget the great secret: we are all made of meat.
The best thing you can do is ensure you, and the people you care about, have excellent metabolic health! Make sure y'all are insulin sensitive.
Can the other developed nations mount a credible pandemic response without the resources of the USA?
Yes. Just to show you an example from the other end of the developmental spectrum: even North Korea made it through COVID virtually without any resources.
You speak English. There is an at least partially English speaking country to your North. There are more English speaking ones scattered around the world. Most cutting edge research in anything will eventually end up in an English version if it was from somewhere-elsistan originally. The US is/was not the only country with something like the CDC. If you google their counterparts I would not be surprised if you found a warning about a measles outbreak in Texas. The research will be done elsewhere; the US may only lose its leadership position in the field.
BTW I would call the US response to COVID-19 just as shambolic as any other country's. The only difference was maybe they could throw more money at the problem. And that they could do again.
No country will be fully prepared. Ever. We don't know what the next pandemic will be, we don't know when it will happen. The lab coats will have an idea but it's too vague to build policy around that in a world, where there continues to be no glory in prevention. Stockpiles will perish, emergency plans will gather dust, and we will all be shocked and surprised again.
Humanity was sort of lucky that two Turkish scientists were quick to realize they could use a DNA something something method, that was not held in the highest regard in scientific circles before COVID hit, to make a vaccine in record time. They did that in Europe.
The only difference was maybe they could throw more money at the problem.
The money was stolen mostly
Call it conspiracy theory or good science, either way, as the ice melts I think it’s likely. Especially when we go poking around to see what’s what as it happens.
Well that’s one potential source of new pathogens, but we don’t need new pathogens to create a disaster.
We (meaning the US) are currently dismantling our pandemic management infrastructure and withdrawing critical funding for international prevention efforts, kids are dying of Measles already and bird flu is already everywhere for all we know. And don’t forget that the regular flu can still be a major killer. God knows what Ebola is up to these days.
This isn’t a future doomsday scenario like a John Carpenter movie. We will be facing this as the world turns into autumn 2025 in the northern hemisphere.
We’ve had pandemic, now we get second pandemic, and we are going to have it very soon. But this time we will fight it with denial, a weapon proven to be useless against infectious diseases.
Texas measles has entered chat, followed by dismissive remarks from RFK Jr.