Screenshot From Johns Hopkins Epilogue Video
#16,810
It's been 29 months since the first hints of the coronavirus outbreak began to filter out of Wuhan China (see China: 27 Cases of `Atypical Viral Pneumonia' Reported In Wuhan, Hubei) - and after millions of deaths, horrendous economic losses, and tremendous social upheavals - the world has changed irrevocably.
Many have claimed that no one could have anticipated this level of carnage from a modern pandemic.
But time and again, people did warn that another severe pandemic was inevitable. Just over 15 years ago, I wrote a blog called `Quotable Quotes', which listed more than a dozen pandemic warnings from world leaders, scientists, and public Health and Safety officials.
How accurate were there warnings? Take a look.
Everything you say in advance of a pandemic seems alarmist. Anything you’ve done after it starts is inadequate.
- Michael Leavitt, Secretary of HHS
This is a bomb that will impact the world.
-- Thommy Thompson, Former Secretary, US Health and Human Services
[A pandemic] is an absolute certainty. When it comes to a pandemic we are overdue and we're under-prepared.
-- Mike Leavitt, Secretary, US Health and Human Services
The number of people infected will go beyond billions because between 25 and 30% will fall ill.
-- Klaus Stohr, Director, WHO Global Influenza Center
This is a very ominous situation for the globe. It is the most important threat we are facing right now.
-- Julie Gerberding, US Centers For Disease Control and Prevention
We don't know what the fatality will be but we can expect it to be very high. There will be enormous economic dislocation. Stock markets will close, international travel and trade will be limited.
-- Peter Cordingley, WHO regional spokesman
The best we can do is try to survive it. We need a Manhattan Project yesterday.
-- Paul Gully, Deputy Chief Public Health Officer, Canada
Short of thermonuclear war, I have a hard time imagining anything in my lifetime that would be as horrible.
-- Laurie Garrett, US Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow for Global Health
We're dealing here with world survival issues -- or the survival of the world as we know it.
-- David Nabarro, United Nations Senior System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza
There would be no mutual aid, we'd have to take care of this ourselves.
-- Florida Governer Jeb Bush February 15, 2006
If a pandemic hits it's going to be very, very serious for the whole world -- not only the deaths that will occur, but the world economy will tank. People will go and lock themselves in closets. They won't shop, they won't go to movies, they won't get on airplanes, they won't stay in hotels.
-- J.W. Marriott Jr, head of Marriott International Inc. February 15, 2006
It is no matter if the flu pandemic will occur or not, it will occur. What we don't know yet is when.
-- Joxel Garci, deputy director, Pan American Health Organization
The arrival of a pandemic influenza would trigger a reaction that would change the world overnight. A vaccine would not be available for a number of months after the pandemic started, and there are very limited stockpiles of antiviral drugs. Foreign trade and travel would be reduced or even ended in an attempt to stop the virus from entering new countries. It is likely that transportation would also be significantly curtailed domestically, as smaller communities sought to keep the disease contained.
-- Michael T. Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, Associate Director of the Department of Homeland Security's National Center for Food Protection and Defense, and Professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health
"You're going to be staying home for one year. There will be no school, there will be no work. All we'll be doing is trying to keep ourselves alive."
-- Richard Canas, Director of the New Jersey State Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness
While some listened to these remarkably prescient warnings, most did not.
A pandemic, many believed, was both unlikely and too difficult to prepare for. It would require spending huge amounts of money against a threat that might not happen for years.
The leading pandemic threat 15 years ago was avian H5N1 influenza. So, after the relatively mild H1N1 `swine' flu pandemic of 2009 ended, pandemic preparedness was put on a back burner (see 2017's Pandemic Unpreparedness Revisited).
We'd had our pandemic, too many in positions of power reasoned, and it would decades before another hit. And besides, it was mild, and modern medicine would protect us.
There were still those who warned that another pandemic could happen at any time (see below), but government and private sector commitment to real preparedness remained elusive in the decade leading up to COVID.
Johns Hopkins Pandemic Table Top Exercise (EVENT 201) Live Streamed Tomorrow
CLADE X: Archived Video & Recap
Bipartisan Report of The Blue Ribbon Study Panel On Biodefense
Which is why we were caught with shamefully low amounts of working ventilators and PPEs in our strategic national stockpile, without the surge capacity in hospitals to handle the first wave of cases, and with no cohesive plan for a `non-influenza' pandemic.
Deficits that are still largely in place today.
The next pandemic could be mild like 2009, or it could be far worse than COVID. It could start today, or it might not come for years. But another pandemic is inevitable.
Last summer, in PNAS Research: Intensity and Frequency of Extreme Novel Epidemics, researchers suggested that the probability of novel disease outbreaks will likely grow three-fold in the next few decades.
Which means the next global public health crisis may be a lot closer than we think, and we ignore those pandemic warnings of 15 years ago (again) at our own, considerable, peril.
