Given the engineered collapse of USAID and the NIH in the USA, as well as their turning away from WHO support, what are the most likely future scenarios? Can the other developed nations mount a credible pandemic response without the resources of the USA?
I am especially interested in global perspectives because pathogens don’t need passports. How might this impact the global order?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CyVi4UzKxE&list=LL&index=8
I realize this link doesn’t directly answer your question, but it was the right technical level for me to better understand what’s the big deal about the bird flu. And it has some comments about the state of healthcare here in the US & what we’re doing (not doing) to prevent another pandemic. I liked it enough that I watched all 40 minutes, so I guess that’s something? lol.
Oh that is a good video and a good channel overall, thank you.
Yeah I don’t think I need to be an infectious disease expert to see the writing on the wall. We learned from the COVID Experience that a lot of the pain of a pandemic is the social chaos and confusion that make solving the resource choke-points even harder, creating a runaway feedback loop of problems.
This time around we are less prepared, less informed and the woo-woo crowd has had their feelings validated lately so they are feeling extra empowered.
Stocking up on simple essentials in a calm and measured manner is surely not a bad idea. Just some extra toilet paper, hygiene supplies.
And of course, beans.
Just wait til the CDC is gutted while at the precipice of a bird flu pandemic.
Call it conspiracy theory or good science, either way, as the ice melts I think it’s likely. Especially when we go poking around to see what’s what as it happens.
Well that’s one potential source of new pathogens, but we don’t need new pathogens to create a disaster.
We (meaning the US) are currently dismantling our pandemic management infrastructure and withdrawing critical funding for international prevention efforts, kids are dying of Measles already and bird flu is already everywhere for all we know. And don’t forget that the regular flu can still be a major killer. God knows what Ebola is up to these days.
This isn’t a future doomsday scenario like a John Carpenter movie. We will be facing this as the world turns into autumn 2025 in the northern hemisphere.
We’ve had pandemic, now we get second pandemic, and we are going to have it very soon. But this time we will fight it with denial, a weapon proven to be useless against infectious diseases.
I can’t speak for the political aspects.
CSIS has a interesting talk on the politics of global health https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnErbYQ55kY
However, the global metabolic crisis is a huge risk factor for pandemics. People with compromised immune systems are far more likely to be affected by or disabled by global pandemics. In the USA something like 8% of adults have ideal metabolic health, that means 92% have a compromised immune system
So the field is ripe for harvest then. :(
I’m trying to prepare myself for things to get really bad really quickly. Pandemics are the Achilles heel of complex global societies that forget the great secret: we are all made of meat.
My magic eightball says, “Signs point to yes” - we’re in a global state where every winter there are pretty significant health risks to flying and outbreaks… if you don’t know someone with long COVID then you’re extremely lucky, it’s really degenerative in some people I love.
The difference is that if something like those first two COVID winters happened again it’s unlikely we’d see any sort of mass order (and government mandate to allow remote work) in America like we saw before. But up here in Vancouver most jobs that can be done remotely have now shifted to that and people avoid going to crowded places when an outbreak is happening. You’ll often just see Skytrain extremely vacant if people have heard a flu is going around.
Countries outside the US have invested independently in better staffed research teams to fight annual outbreaks and sane countries have rolling mailing lists (I got an invitation two weeks ago for my next free shot!) about when to top up your flu/covid/rsv vaccine. If the US wants to be a breeding ground for outbreaks we can’t stop them, but we’re trying to insulate Canada as well as possible and working with the EU to do so.
Americans take credit for many things where their contribution is null. If anything, we’ll probably be safer 5y down the line because there will be less people trying to profit from pandemic potential diseases (tamiflu much…)