Preventing the next pandemic

Simon Hampel

Simon Hampel

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20+ year member
I thought this article was interesting - not specifically related to zoos, but could still be relevant.

Australian experts to train animal disease detectives to help prevent another pandemic - ABC News

Australian scientists will train overseas farm workers and veterinarians to become animal disease detectives in a bid to stop the next deadly pandemic.

The program will see 40 experts from veterinary schools across Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific train animal workers in 11 South-East Asian countries.

Workers will be trained in methods of surveillance, tracking trends or changes in animals and investigating outbreaks.

... read more

Key points:
  • The government-funded project aims to reduce the risk of another pandemic
  • Forty experts will train animal workers to recognise the signs of a virus outbreak
  • Three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases come from animals
 
Pandemics seem to occur about every 100 years, so, with luck we will not see another one for quite a while.
 
Terry Thomas said:
Pandemics seem to occur about every 100 years, so, with luck we will not see another one for quite a while.
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Even if this were true - which it is not, as including COVID-19 there have been a total of seven pandemics in the last 100 years, of which all but one have been in your own lifetime - it is not a matter of luck, it is a matter of preparedness and of taking action in timely fashion.
 
Terry Thomas said:
Pandemics seem to occur about every 100 years, so, with luck we will not see another one for quite a while.
Click to expand...

Depends on exactly how you define "pandemic" (it doesn't necessarily mean "global"), but HIV/AIDS, Bird Flu, Cholera, Swine Flu, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Yellow Fever are all recently active pandemics with varying forms of treatment or vaccination available.

When travelling outside of Australia, we typically vaccinate for Cholera, Tuberculosis, Yellow Fever - depending on exactly where you are travelling to and what your risk profile is.

Global pandemics affecting a lot of people all at once with high mortality rate are rare - but there are plenty of diseases which we still need to manage.

Even influenza is a global pandemic which we don't have effective control over - but we manage it through seasonal vaccination. It still kills a huge number of people worldwide every year.

Spanish flu in 1918 was the most well known, but there have been two actual flu pandemics since - the Asian flu in 1957 killed over 2 million people and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 killed 1 million people.

It's always possible that we see a particularly virulent form of influenza break out worldwide causing another global pandemic - especially if we are unable to develop an effective vaccine for it.

Increasing density of population and increasing demands for food are always going to put humans and animals in close contact. Given previous examples of animal-human transmission of disease (bird flu, swine flu, mad cow disease / Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, COVID-19, etc) - it might be increasingly likely that we see more such outbreaks of exotic diseases originating from animals in the future.
 
Simon Hampel said:
Spanish flu in 1918 was the most well known, but there have been two actual flu pandemics since - the Asian flu in 1957 killed over 2 million people and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 killed 1 million people.
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Three :p Swine Flu in 2009 was officially designated as a pandemic, too.

The other officially-recognised pandemics to have taken place since 1920 are a pair of cholera (1899-1923 and 1961-1965) and the ongoing HIV pandemic.
 
One thing that has been at the back of my mind, was the 2009 H1N1 pandemic talked about like the one now at the time? I was certainly alive, but I was pretty young. And it doesn't seem to have been too big of a topic (from what I've seen), but I'm not sure. Was it because there was already a flu vaccine?

On a lighter note, all of us here have survived at least one pandemic, so we can definitely do it again :).
 
I think everyone should learn from this pandemic and have basic hygienic awareness when the next happens. For example here in Hong Kong, we gain a lot from SARS in 2003 so we know we should always wash our hands and wear mask in this pandemic. It isn't our city is doing better in government laws, but we all learn from SARS and know how to prevent more people from infecting.
 
aardvark250 said:
I think everyone should learn from this pandemic and have basic hygienic awareness when the next happens. For example here in Hong Kong, we gain a lot from SARS in 2003 so we know we should always wash our hands and wear mask in this pandemic. It isn't our city is doing better in government laws, but we all learn from SARS and know how to prevent more people from infecting.
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Mitigation measures and how serious we take it should be increased drastically as well. It's crazy to see how something as small as a virus can shut down our world as we know it in just a matter of weeks. We have been taught a valuable lesson, so hopefully we learn from it.
 
ZooBinh said:
Mitigation measures and how serious we take it should be increased drastically as well. It's crazy to see how something as small as a virus can shut down our world as we know it in just a matter of weeks. We have been taught a valuable lesson, so hopefully we learn from it.
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The only way to learn from it, is to permanently stop ALL passenger aviation.
Without doing so - it will all happen again, it is only a matter of when...
This is the transmission method for any such infection.
If indiscriminate and unnecessary mass movement of people is stopped then individual countries, have more chance of isolating any problem.
 
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amur leopard said:
And replacing it with what? Of course this is a problem, but replacements would both be too slow, pose the same problems of transmission and have a negative impact on businesses.
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Leave them open then - that is the choice - all it takes is one person, on one plane - multiply that individual risk, and...
Hundreds of strangers in a warm confined metal box, close together, breathing each others air for hours on end, would be called an 'incubator' if it didn't have wings - just so millions of people can have cheap holidays. I think you need to get real. Countries which depend on mass international tourism are in for a permanent hit - or we all risk it again, and see....
 
amur leopard said:
They should anyway - a virus could come from there whether or not it actually did. We have to act looking into the future, not just relying on what's happened in the past.
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This has been covered in other threads repeatedly, along with the consumption of wild animals, called 'bush-meat' in third world and Asian countries and 'game' in the west and developed ones..

A westerner tucking into his game pie, is on thin ice when lecturing a starving African about the rights and wrongs of eating a Duiker.
 
Andrew Swales said:
Leave them open then - that is the choice - all it takes is one person, on one plane - multiply that individual risk, and...
Hundreds of strangers in a warm confined metal box, close together, breathing each others air for hours on end, would be called an 'incubator' if it didn't have wings - just so millions of people can have cheap holidays. I think you need to get real. Countries which depend on mass international tourism are in for a permanent hit - or we all risk it again, and see....
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For sure, for sure. I don't see many countries like the Maldives, Kenya or Botswana who rely heavily on tourism recovering easily from this. The ironic thing is that the virus has barely impacted them, and yet the backlash will take a large toll on their economies. Similarly, places like the Azores, Ibiza or Majorca will find themselves short of funds. If the number of flights decreases, this will also have a severe impact on airlines and tourism companies, but also an effect on businesses worldwide. Essentially, the question we have to ask ourselves is whether we would rather endure a pandemic of similar scale to this one later on or whether we are willing to abandon all air travel and tourism (essentially). I strongly suspect the answer will be the latter. I travel predominantly by train given most of the time I'm just going to France or slightly further afield in Europe. However, to see my grandparents in Cyprus I need to fly. Equally, to see relatives in Canada, I need to fly. And I doubt the majority of people in the US will suddenly start using Amtrak. Of course there will be a decrease in flights over the next 6 months, maybe a year, but as people put the effects of the virus behind them, they will start flying and travelling again, without a doubt.
 
Andrew Swales said:
This has been covered in other threads repeatedly, along with the consumption of wild animals, called 'bush-meat' in third world and Asian countries and 'game' in the west and developed ones..

A westerner tucking into his game pie, is on thin ice when lecturing a starving African about the rights and wrongs of eating a Duiker.
Click to expand...

No problems there, I never eat game or any produce from wild animals. However, you are right in that many people here do, and that we can never claim to have the moral high ground when we are eating these animals not out of necessity but for fun. Of course game and bushmeat are the same thing, except the people who need this bushmeat to survive are not in the same position as us.

However, I am not talking about this. Do you not agree that consumption of wild animals in unhygienic conditions can lead to the outbreak of a pandemic? I am not saying that these people in Africa and elsewhere must change their habits or livelihoods, I am saying that we, since we are in a considerable more privileged position, have to help them out of a position in which they need to turn to bushmeat to survive. This would solve several issues at once. Firstly, and most importantly, it would help them to lead a better life. Secondly, it would lead to a decrease in poaching and bushmeat hunting. And lastly it would mean that their economies would develop further and be able to climb out of the first and second sectors they are currently trapped in.

Of course, this is not guaranteed to stop a pandemic being released. Poaching and bushmeat hunting, along with a plethora of other potentially virus-propagating activities, will still go on. However, we are trying to lessen the chances of a virus breaking out again - I gather that is the point of this thread. In the absence of the possibility of perfection, we must strive to get as close to it as we can.
 
Terry Thomas said:
Pandemics seem to occur about every 100 years, so, with luck we will not see another one for quite a while.
Click to expand...

SARS was, like, not even twenty years ago, and we were spared an Ebola pandemic in 2014 out of dumb luck. The most recent outbreak still isn't over either.
 
amur leopard said:
No problems there, I never eat game or any produce from wild animals. However, you are right in that many people here do, and that we can never claim to have the moral high ground when we are eating these animals not out of necessity but for fun. Of course game and bushmeat are the same thing, except the people who need this bushmeat to survive are not in the same position as us.

However, I am not talking about this. Do you not agree that consumption of wild animals in unhygienic conditions can lead to the outbreak of a pandemic? I am not saying that these people in Africa and elsewhere must change their habits or livelihoods, I am saying that we, since we are in a considerable more privileged position, have to help them out of a position in which they need to turn to bushmeat to survive. This would solve several issues at once. Firstly, and most importantly, it would help them to lead a better life. Secondly, it would lead to a decrease in poaching and bushmeat hunting. And lastly it would mean that their economies would develop further and be able to climb out of the first and second sectors they are currently trapped in.

Of course, this is not guaranteed to stop a pandemic being released. Poaching and bushmeat hunting, along with a plethora of other potentially virus-propagating activities, will still go on. However, we are trying to lessen the chances of a virus breaking out again - I gather that is the point of this thread. In the absence of the possibility of perfection, we must strive to get as close to it as we can.
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Your points are theoretical and easy to agree with. Please don't take anything I said as my condoning wet markets or the wildlife trade. I was simply pointing out that it is a big, complicated world, and however simple an argument might appear on here, it is very difficult to transpose standards and opinion on wildly differing cultures.
 
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