The Importance of Preventing Future Pandemics
Pandemics and other emerging zoonoses cause widespread human suffering, and likely more than a trillion dollars in economic damages every single year. Increasingly, the scientific research we have done, and others, shows that these events are caused by human-driven environmental change.
Yet, our strategies to deal with future pandemics and emerging diseases are based on waiting for them to emerge and hoping that a vaccine or treatment can be identified in time to prevent their impact.
Sadly, with COVID-19, we saw this strategy fail. Even with the most rapidly developed vaccine in modern history, at least one million people died before the mRNA vaccines became widely available. Additionally, arcane mitigation strategies like quarantines, travel bans, social distancing and masking, shut down our economies for long periods, leading to unsustainable economic loss.
Building on work originally led by Dr. Peter Daszak, Nature.Health.Global. will work with communications specialists to generate information that demonstrates the potential value of pandemic prevention. Using our One Health network, we will work with collaborating organizations to help promote this approach and drive policies to end the pandemic era.
Nature.Health.Global. believes that addressing pandemic risks would be far more effective if we also considered dealing with their underlying causes. Our recent work, in collaboration with leading economists, showed that strategies for preventing future pandemics involving reducing the wildlife trade and land use change, and increasing One Health surveillance across human-livestock-wildlife interfaces would provide incredible return-on-investment, 10 – 100X the amount they would cost. Furthermore, by promoting reduced deforestation, these prevention strategies would increase carbon sequestration and reduce the impacts of climate change.
However, it is notoriously difficult to implement preventative measures, even where highly beneficial, because our natural tendency is to respond to crises, and when one is prevented, it’s likely impact may not be fully recognized.
Nature.Health.Global. will highlight the economic value of prevention strategies and work to better communicate this to the public and decision makers.
