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In the history of our time, the political damage caused by President Donald Trump will figure prominently. But severe pandemic physical, emotional and economic trauma will prevail. The lessons we will learn from the Trump presidency may determine the fate of the republic. But the lessons we learn from Covid-19 can shape the future of humanity.
Nature is out there to kill us
Do not be fooled by rainbows and sunsets. Beneath all that beauty lies a fierce evolutionary war between humans and pathogenic microbes. Over time we adapt to new diseases. But the problem is that pathogens evolve much faster.
A new pathogen appears on average, every 4-5 years. Covid-19 has been quite bad, but the biggest risk comes from a new flu that can have a high fatality rate and that is highly contagious before symptoms develop.
The model shows an annual 3 percent probability of a flu pandemic with a fatality rate similar to the 2009 swine flu pandemic (which killed 150,000-575,000 people worldwide in its first year, compared to about 2 million deaths from Covid-19. There is an annual 1 percent probability that a flu pandemic will cause 6 million or more deaths.
We humans are making the problem worse
About 75 percent of emerging diseases are zoonotic (of animal origin). And people amplify that threat in different ways. The demand for protein has led to tremendous increases in the number and concentration of pets like pigs.
At the same time, deforestation is putting people in more frequent contact with wildlife such as bats, which spread the infection through their feces. Scientists have discovered 1,200 animal-transmitted diseases in recent years, and estimate that there may be another 700,000 diseases of which we know nothing.
Isolation from these threats is a myth
From almost anywhere in the globe, one day of air travel is enough to get to London or Atlanta. And as we have seen, the spread of the disease beyond national borders
in countries such as Brazil, South Africa or Britain it can lead to genetic variants that circumvent immunity or become more lethal.
Decentralization is a good political theory and a bad health policy
The U.S. response to Covid-19 is spread across more than 3,000 state, local, and neighborhood health departments and agencies. At first, the federal government failed to provide adequate support for testing and tracking contacts, failed to effectively distribute protective equipment, and failed to establish and implement rational home-stay and school closure measures. The result has been an impromptu response, in which large parts of the country have essentially succumbed to the spread of the virus.
Altruism is not an effective driver of behavior change
Why have so many Americans not taken relatively small preventative steps, such as wearing masks and social distancing? Part of the reason, was because of a president who constantly mocked and politicized the public health crisis. But the problem extends deeper than that.
While the disease spread widely late last year, more than 70 percent of its spread occurred from people aged 20-49 years. But more than 80 percent of people who have died from Covid-19 since the beginning of February 2020 are 65 years of age or older.
Consciously or not, this is a great betrayal of one generation to another. Look at it from another perspective: If you are 65 or older and affected by the disease, you have a 5.6 percent chance of dying. If you are 20-49 years old and have been affected by Covid-12, you only have a 0092 percent chance of dying.
Although we are better prepared for the next pandemic, we are not at all prepared for the big one
If our response were to be calibrated according to the urgency of the risk, we would slow down deforestation, and better control the wildlife trade. We would engage in a much broader and ongoing effort to monitor pathogens that spread from animals to humans.
We would also expedite the creation of a genetic catalog of zoonotic diseases, which can help us identify and test for new threats. We would also invest more in strengthening health systems in the developing world so that they can eradicate the early “sparks” of infectious disease. / “The Washington Post”
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