COVID is just over three years old. Based on a World Health Organization (WHO) dashboard, as of June 28, there had been 767,518,723 confirmed COVID cases, including 6,947,192 deaths, worldwide.
And it’s not finished. COVID drags on as the mother virus spawns new mutant strains. The scientific community at all levels worries about the next pandemic.
How bad can it get? We cannot forget the death toll from Spanish flu, estimated at 50 million, spread by people returning from the Great War. We learned of the Black Death in school that attacked Western Eurasia and North Africa to stand as the most fatal pandemic in recorded human history, with a toll somewhere between 75 and 200 million peaking in Europe around the mid-1300s. The cause was Yersinia pestis spread primarily by rat fleas, unwanted passengers on ships along major trade routes of the time.
Read Also
Body condition, nutrition and vaccination for brood cows
One of the remarkable events of the past century related to ranching has been the genetic evolution of brood cows….
One of the things that escaped much of the media coverage throughout the COVID assault turned out to be a lack of acknowledgement that pandemics involve animals. Failure to chronicle the zoonotic aspect of pandemics is a mistake. Successful management of pandemics calls for One Health solutions.
Human ignorance remains a mortal enemy in successfully planning to prevent and control pandemics. The anti-vaccine movement is as dangerous as it is disappointing. Judith, my wife, returned from a luncheon one day, upset that one of the guests, an ardent “anti-vaxxer” nurse spent nearly the entire meal arguing that RNA vaccines destroy the human immune systems.
The Journal of the American Medical Association states it point blank. “Several major reviews analyzing the global response to the coronavirus outbreak has delivered a damning verdict: the international health system was ‘clearly unfit’ to prevent the pandemic, and needs radical reforms to avoid future mistakes.
“In an 86-page report, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response — led by two former heads of governments and a host of international experts — sets out a range of recommendations to better prepare for emerging health threats.” Most importantly, the panel dissected how a small outbreak morphed into a devastating pandemic.
COVID caught the world off guard despite SARS, MERS, Ebola and Zika, not to mention recent experiences with foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever. The Journal of the American Medical Association clearly states that “Zoonotic spillover events are accelerating. Few governments have rigorous pandemic preparedness plans. Sixteen international reports with important recommendations have been largely ignored since 2011.” It’s estimated the pandemic set global development back 25 years in just 25 weeks.
Tardy negotiations with China delayed the announcement of a global health emergency by WHO, allowing the fast-moving respiratory virus to spread globally. Measures, such as masking and self-imposed quarantine, were then delayed.
Health systems were quickly overwhelmed. Health workers lacked adequate personal protective equipment and supplies such as oxygen. At least 17,000 health workers died from COVID in the first year of the pandemic and mental health issues soared. Border closures, hoarding and export controls on medical supplies made the crisis more acute.
Misinformation about the virus became a conflagration via social media and private messaging services. Preventative measures such as face masks and lockdowns became divisive issues in a highly politicized climate. At the other end of the scale, billions of people without internet access received no information.
International squabbles fragmented science and global solidarity as domestic pressure emerged in many countries. The $22 trillion effect of the pandemic might be the biggest shock to the world economy in 75 years.
New pandemics might not be caused by viruses. Carla Bieg Salazar and colleagues at Qassim University, through the International Journal of Health Sciences, warn scientists about bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or bacteria linked to water and food sanitation.
“Multi-drug resistant bacteria, as well as newly mutated bacteria, may infect humans and animals. Inevitably, antibiotic resistance will lead to high mortality, expensive medical logistics, infrastructure and hospitalization.” Many of the deaths attributed to Spanish flu resulted from bacterial pneumonia before the advent of penicillin.
“The pandemic has shaken confidence in the international agenda pushing sustainable development,” states the Journal of the American Medical Association. African swine fever in China clearly showed the world’s inability to cope with major livestock diseases. African swine fever, a tick-borne, highly infectious viral disease of swine, was first described by R. Eustace Montgomery in 1921. He also described outbreaks of the disease in Kenya between 1909 and 1915 that killed nearly 100 per cent of infected swine. After Montgomery’s report, African swine fever appeared in many areas of South Africa. African swine fever remains one of the most critical diseases in the pig industry. In Asia, 15 countries have already reported African swine fever outbreaks as of Nov. 22, 2021. There’s no clear end in sight. Even though African swine fever has been on the radar screen for 100 years, we’re still missing an effective vaccine.
With the regular appearance of new variants, pursuing “Zero COVID” is not realistic, as is the case with many other pandemic pathogens. Perhaps our aim needs to be managing pathogens while vaccines slowly subdue pandemics, a shift in the mindset of fighting disease to stop pandemics while accepting the tendency for pandemics to linger. We must accept the recommendations of the Journal of the American Medical Association forum: “Even after the catastrophic effects of earlier outbreaks of SARS, Ebola virus disease and Zika virus disease, nations became complacent, failing to prepare domestically or fund global response capabilities. The world largely ignored glaring biological warning signals — but that must not be the case this time. With a pandemic that has touched every life on the globe, has already cost (millions of) lives, has devastated economies, and will continue to afflict the health of societies for years to come, calls to reimagine and re-create systems for global health security must not go unheeded.”
