In an op-ed in the New York Times Peter Daszak urges us to “stop what drives mass epidemics rather than just respond to individual diseases”:
In early 2018, during a meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva, a group of experts I belong to (the R&D Blueprint) coined the term “Disease Xâ€: We were referring to the next pandemic, which would be caused by an unknown, novel pathogen that hadn’t yet entered the human population. As the world stands today on the edge of the pandemic precipice, it’s worth taking a moment to consider whether Covid-19 is the disease our group was warning about.
Disease X, we said back then, would likely result from a virus originating in animals and would emerge somewhere on the planet where economic development drives people and wildlife together. Disease X would probably be confused with other diseases early in the outbreak and would spread quickly and silently; exploiting networks of human travel and trade, it would reach multiple countries and thwart containment. Disease X would have a mortality rate higher than a seasonal flu but would spread as easily as the flu. It would shake financial markets even before it achieved pandemic status.
In a nutshell, Covid-19 is Disease X.
He never really defines “what drives mass epidemics” and his solution is to spend more on experts, a solution you might expect from an expert.
Is there any actual evidence that would solve the problem? As he notes there is still no vaccine for SARS, Zika, or HIV. There is no vaccine for the common cold for that matter. Is that because insufficient money has been devoted to the search or because those vaccines are elusive and we might never have them?
I think he’s getting lost in the weeds. COVID-19, SARS, the flu pandemic of 1968, the flu pandemic of 1958, and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 all started in China. So did one of the most grievous pandemics of the last millennium, the Black Plague. Either China needs to change the practices that lead to the development of pandemics or we should take the practices that lead to pandemics starting there much more seriously than we have.
There is no definitive conclusion that the Spanish flu came from a zoonotic event in China. The first reported outbreaks in Europe point to its origins in Europe.
And yes – China is going to change. A whole generation of Chinese will be germaphobes.
There’s an interesting article on the subject here but, yes, you’re right. Records are poor enough that we’ll probably never know conclusively.
I should add that I think there are many public health issues of potentially global scope that need to be addressed with China. These include not only agricultural practices but traditional Chinese medicine, widespread availability of antibiotics over-the-counter, and lack of a robust system of civil law.
Those are fair points and criticisms. I sincerely think the coronavirus disaster will cause an impetus for a significant rethinking about these things in China — it happened in Hong Kong after SARS.
What is unfair is the association of events centuries ago when people did not know about the causes of contagious disease and how to prevent them.
The reason I think it’s fair is that the traditional practices that may result in a reservoir of disease in China did not begin with modern medicine. There appears to be a pattern of behavior for which modern transportation has increased the risks.
And the curious business of the South Korean Christian cult rumored to have sent it’s 110,000 parishioners to it’s rival churches to spread contagion for the expressed purpose of deflecting blame from itself.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3052322/coronavirus-secretive-south-korean-church-linked-outbreak-held
Under the heading: Deliberate human activity.
Interesting though that the 1918-19 pandemic was not stopped by the lack of air travel.
There have been multiple pandemics in the past where millions of people have died. Probably the worst by far in modern history is AIDS, originating in Africa. The 58 and 68 pandemics probably had between 1-2 million deaths while AIDS is well over 30 million by itself. Justinian’s plague was an earlier bubonic plague and I think it was thought to come out of Egypt. There were many waves of cholera and I think those came out of India and even Russia. (SARS had about 700 deaths. Not sure I would add it to the big list of pandemics.)
Steve
300 million people died of smallpox in the 20th century alone. It is thought to have originated in India or Egypt.
I’m not sure what your point is. If it is that globalization has costs that go beyond economic costs, I agree.
I think you are focusing uniquely on China, which given current circumstances is OK. But, the HIV pandemic alone, not from China, is responsible for more deaths than the modern Chinese based pandemics. Also, a lot of the things you point out, like selling antibiotics across the counter, are pretty common around the entire world. These are really global issues, with China just being one of the worst offenders.
Steve
It’s a principle of optimization. You deal with the instances that have the most impact first. It’s like treating the gaping wound in the abdomen before a hangnail.