PANDEMICS

There’s one thing that is consistently ranked as one of the most likely things to end the world, that would kill millions of people: a pandemic.

A pandemic is a disease that escapes our control, sweeping across the world, killing millions and changing civilization.

Do you think there is no danger today? You are wrong.

The risk of it happening has never been higher: there are about five new emerging diseases happening somewhere on the planet every year and the rate is accelerating. There are around one and a half million viruses in wildlife that we don’t know about yet. Any one of those could be spilling over into the human population right now.

The question is: “Will we be ready for it?”

Pandemics begin in a world invisible to the naked eye. Microbes were likely the first living things on earth, many can’t replicate on their own so they hijack other living cells. Some are so strong they can overwhelm our immune system and kill us.

Pandemics are mainly caused by two types of microbes: bacteria and viruses. Viruses are adapted to jump from one species to another. When this spill over to humans, the new virus in called a zoonotic virus and they’re extremely dangerous. These are viruses which mutate rapidly and therefore change the surface and evade immune responses quickly. They can transform into a new virus once they get into the human population.

We developed technology that could defend us: the quarantine, the microscopes, antibiotics and vaccine. This is how a vaccine works is: we get injected with proteins from the virus and we create our own antibodies. These are little molecules that attach to those proteins and neutralize the virus and allow it to be swept out of the body. So, when we get infected by a real virus, we can rapidly create an immune response. Studies show that fewer people are contracting infectious diseases today, but the number of outbreaks is increasing and that is largely because of emerging zoonotic viruses.

What is the government doing to protect us?

After the S.A.R.S. epidemic, in 2002, the OMS brought together 196 countries and they all committed to improving their ability to “detect, asses, notify and report public health events”. In 2014, only a third of them were in compliance.

Because it takes a long time to produce a vaccine, organizations like CEPI have been founded. Traditional vaccines have a long and expensive process, but this new vaccine doesn’t use proteins. It injects genetic material that tells the body to produce those proteins itself: your body becomes the manufacturer, creating the protein molecules and then the antibodies for them. Scientists can customize the genetic material to get the body to produce the protein molecules of almost any virus. Meanwhile, scientists are trying to develop a universal influenza vaccine, one shot that could immunize us from every possible flu strain for life.

The truth is human technology has made the next pandemic inevitable. Deforestation is bringing more wild animals into contact with more people and factory farming is pushing animals closer together, giving their viruses more opportunities to combine into one that could infect us. But human technology has stopped pandemics before, and it’s our only chance against the next one. 

SILVIA