We Could Face Another Pandemic in Our Lifetime Deadlier Than COVID-19 — Here’s Where It Will Begin
The deadly COVID-19 pandemic, which lasted for several years, drastically changed the world, affecting nearly every part of a person’s daily life. Millions of people lost their lives, economies slowed down, and the health sector was pushed to its extreme limits. Constant lockdowns and isolation changed the way in which people connected. It wasn’t just limited to the physical toll; the deadly pandemic also left a deep emotional scar on each of us. Just as people began to feel the relief of living a pandemic-free life, with hopes for a calmer future, a leading health expert has recently delivered a chilling warning.
Epidemiologist Michael T. Osterholm has predicted that another global pandemic could occur in our lifetime, with this one being far more deadly than COVID-19. Osterholm, who was a strong supporter of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic and is also the founder of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, has been sounding urgent alarms with his claims. As reported by the Daily Mail, in his newly launched book, which goes by the title ‘The Big One,’ he compared the next major epidemic to “a biological bomb going off,” claiming that the world will “once again be on fire.”
He wrote, “We spend many billions of dollars every year on national defense and security in the United States, but pandemics have killed more human beings in modern times than all the wars in history.” Osterholm further added, “It is no exaggeration to say that each of us remains in far greater constant danger from microbial enemies than from human ones.” A Ted-Ed video, posted two years ago on YouTube, also explained that in the last 400 years, the longest the world has gone without a deadly outbreak was just four years. While innovation in the medical field has definitely reduced the death tolls, dangers are still there.
Scientists estimate that there are still 1.7 million unknown viruses that can spread from mammals and birds, with about 40% of them being dangerous to humans. After conducting a thorough analysis, experts concluded that the yearly chance of another pandemic like COVID-19 is between 2.5% and 3.3%, which is quite low as of now, but not impossible. Osterholm further warns that we must always remain alert for dangerous new diseases that can arise, specifically spreading from animals to humans. Likely sources of such diseases include bats, pigs, poultry, and even monkeys, leaving us extremely vulnerable.
Meanwhile, somewhere in his book, Osterholm writes about an imaginary deadly disease spreading from animals to humans, and compares it to MERS disease, which spread from camels to humans in 2012. Using a 'thought experiment,' he speaks about how a pandemic could start, spread, and be controlled. For instance, some people might never spread the virus to other people even after being infected, while there's another group of people who are called 'super-spreaders,' who can infect hundreds, even across continents. His imaginary disease begins in Kenya and Somalia, where communities face hardship, but the imagined illness could spread rapidly like a flu. It has been reported that such 'thought experiments' help in planning better responses for future pandemics.
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