More deadly pandemics are in store for the U.S. - and experts are sounding the alarms.
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and the head of the Pandemic Center at Brown University’s School of Public Health, told MassLive.com on Monday that people “should pretty much bank on the fact that we will have more pandemics in our future.”
When will it happen? What is the source of infections? Is it already out there? Are we ready? Those are all questions that remain unanswered.
“Is there another pandemic coming? Yes. When? Which pathogen? How severe will it be? No one can say for sure,” “Yonatan Grad, a professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said. “But the big demographic changes that are coming, due to climate change as well as economic and other factors, will alter the landscape and create new risks, both for new pathogens to emerge and for known pathogens to re-emerge.”
While scientists may be bracing for the next pandemic, Americans are still divided over the response to the Covid pandemic that hit America five years ago this week.
According to Nuzzo, the nation is in “worse shape” now than before the outbreak, that resulted in the deaths of more than one million people. That’s even with statistics showing the likelihood of another large-scale pandemic, or pandemics, is growing.
Researchers at Duke University’s Global Health Institute said in 2021 that the prospect of disease outbreaks will likely grow three times in the coming decades, with the probability of a pandemic similar to Covid sitting at about 2 percent in any year.
“When a 100-year flood occurs today, one may erroneously presume that one can afford to wait another 100 years before experiencing another such event,” Dr. Gabriel Katul, the Theodore S. Coile Distinguished Professor of Hydrology and Micrometeorology at the university and an author of the research, said in a statement. “This impression is false. One can get another 100-year flood the next year.”
“According to the Center for Global Development, the annual likelihood of a pandemic is two to three percent, which means a 47 to 57 percent probability of another deadly pandemic in the next 25 years,” noted UC Davis Health Chief of Infectious Diseases Stuart Cohen.
Cohen says that fighting the next one will need to be a “team sport” - something that may fly in the face of the Trump’s administration’s “America First” agenda.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks disease across the country, was told to stop communicating with the World Health Organization a month ago. That move fueled concerns about future disease preparedness and came amid outbreaks of bird flu, measles and tuberculosis. It’s also unclear how much money and resources would be allocated by the White House going forward.
Vaccine hesitancy could also be a problem, with skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services. Under his leadership, the CDC said it would study vaccines and autism, despite research previously finding no link.
Nevertheless, investments in research and the health agencies that lead these efforts will be crucial, scientists say.
“I do think that Covid fatigue will hamper our response —100 percent. But the key is to invest in preparedness to make pandemic management more sustainable — everything from better ventilation, to funding for soap in public school bathrooms, to having studies ready to go in order to determine the most effective interventions,” said Bill Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said.
“The goal here is, how do we increase our resiliency to these events so that when they occur, they don’t upend our lives in profound ways and cause historic drops in life expectancy?” Nuzzo asked.
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