In particular: "The intelligence community has also warned about the possibility of a global pandemic in its annual worldwide threat assessment to Congress every year since 2008, just before the swine flu outbreak. In 2010, the director of national intelligence told Congress that “Significant gaps remain in disease surveillance and reporting that undermine our ability to confront disease outbreaks.” That year he also highlighted the United States’ dependence on foreign sources for many critical pharmaceuticals. In 2011 he warned, “Once such a disease has started to spread, confining it to the immediate region will be very unlikely. Preparedness efforts such as the stockpiling of medical countermeasures will be critical to mitigating the impact from a future pandemic.”
Yes point well made Azeem. In fact the WHO has a placeholder for “Disease X” (we wrote about this last year from a regulatory perspective http://bit.ly/RI_infectDiseases) to plan, prepare and coordinate Member States’ responses for future eventualities. What we see today is the implementation of what MS have - in theory - planned for. I guess each MS and their citizens will evaluate how well their “plans” have been implemented, but certainly the WHO does have mechanisms in place focussed on preparing for Disease X. It strikes me as odd that some MS were dealing with lack of legal authority ie legislation to either enforce home quarantine or deploy the military to reinforce police, which meant some measures were stalled while the law-making process could be completed!
Very good article. What's perhaps most amazing to me is that 478,283 cases is only 0.006% of the world population. I wonder what the numbers will be a year from now.
Interesting article! I am in the biotechnology/food industry, and the repeat history of these events occurring is a hot topic in terms of prevention of these events and from a food security aspect with restricted movement. There are many patterns with food production globally used in terms of business practices, and culturally, that will be hard to overcome to reduce the chances of this happening again.
If anyone is interested in historical references to pandemics being related to human-animal interfaces we put together an article addressing this with food production. (A section of it talks about our industry, but you can scroll to the bottom for the links.)
Thank you. It was thought provoking. While you may deem it a white swan, Govt’s generally view these as black swan. Because the risks of this virus erupting like it has now, has never occurred globally in the past 50 years. SARS, Ebola etc have never developed into a global contagion. This virus caught all nations unaware because of the rapidity of spread and also its 14 day incubation period. We shall get together resources and overcome, surely. But could you examine the economic and geopolitical outcome post-CoVID 19. While you just touched upon it, could you and few intellectuals do some forecasting? Would throw up interesting scenarios.
THANK YOU... I have been saying exactly this and appreciate your writing it! Apart from any "Monday morning quarterbacking" (as said in the U.S.), pandemic risks are and have been known... Trump closed what was a pandemic team that existed in the White House.
I have been thinking about this a lot. Why were governments not more prepared? It probably has to do with the election cycle. "Why advocate for legislation requiring billions in spending on something that might not even happen when I am in office?" With the possible exception of defense, legislation is reactive.
You do realize that such studies and their incendiary content are grist to the nationalist mill that in turn contributes to making global responses more difficult?
While the scientific community may have a valid POV, (and I'm not disputing that at all,) the recent political agenda has been to downplay if not ridicule the expert view. In this scenario, attributing (even ever so slightly) the likelihood of another pandemic to specific habits of a specific population provides the blame game meat on which nationalism thrives.
This is a particular favorite of Trump as he sees the world as little more than a series of game shows with him as the ringmaster. He doesn't need to refer to the academic studies because once he makes the kind of statement that he and Pence have been spouting, (and which ironically is supported by statements included in the referenced research), others can readily come to his aid by pointing to the predictions AND the specificity of those same predictions.
But above that, I'd like to know how the global scientific community will come to a consensus on how this is tackled when what we currently see is ideological division standing in the way.
If, as is suggested in the referenced article, there is a clear line of sight back to exotic culinary tastes in a particular part of the world, just how will the global scientific community, along with politicians in China arrive at a way to tackle the problems that is palatable (sic) to the rest of the world?
Contributions to such programmes should be communicated as insurance premiums. Without such insurance we are making these payouts from future earnings of our children and grandchildren. No wonder they want to congregate in parks and don't care if we die :-)
Weird to comment on my own post - but here is a good essay on what the US intelligence services knew, and what comes next.
https://thedispatch.com/p/how-the-intelligence-community-predicted
In particular: "The intelligence community has also warned about the possibility of a global pandemic in its annual worldwide threat assessment to Congress every year since 2008, just before the swine flu outbreak. In 2010, the director of national intelligence told Congress that “Significant gaps remain in disease surveillance and reporting that undermine our ability to confront disease outbreaks.” That year he also highlighted the United States’ dependence on foreign sources for many critical pharmaceuticals. In 2011 he warned, “Once such a disease has started to spread, confining it to the immediate region will be very unlikely. Preparedness efforts such as the stockpiling of medical countermeasures will be critical to mitigating the impact from a future pandemic.”
Yes point well made Azeem. In fact the WHO has a placeholder for “Disease X” (we wrote about this last year from a regulatory perspective http://bit.ly/RI_infectDiseases) to plan, prepare and coordinate Member States’ responses for future eventualities. What we see today is the implementation of what MS have - in theory - planned for. I guess each MS and their citizens will evaluate how well their “plans” have been implemented, but certainly the WHO does have mechanisms in place focussed on preparing for Disease X. It strikes me as odd that some MS were dealing with lack of legal authority ie legislation to either enforce home quarantine or deploy the military to reinforce police, which meant some measures were stalled while the law-making process could be completed!
Very good article. What's perhaps most amazing to me is that 478,283 cases is only 0.006% of the world population. I wonder what the numbers will be a year from now.
Interesting article! I am in the biotechnology/food industry, and the repeat history of these events occurring is a hot topic in terms of prevention of these events and from a food security aspect with restricted movement. There are many patterns with food production globally used in terms of business practices, and culturally, that will be hard to overcome to reduce the chances of this happening again.
If anyone is interested in historical references to pandemics being related to human-animal interfaces we put together an article addressing this with food production. (A section of it talks about our industry, but you can scroll to the bottom for the links.)
https://medium.com/@futurefields/covid-19-cellular-agriculture-and-the-future-of-safe-food-dba6410b0af2
every Governments PRIME responsibility is the safety and security of its people. Clearly they only pay lip service to this (as they do climate change)
Azeem,
Thank you. It was thought provoking. While you may deem it a white swan, Govt’s generally view these as black swan. Because the risks of this virus erupting like it has now, has never occurred globally in the past 50 years. SARS, Ebola etc have never developed into a global contagion. This virus caught all nations unaware because of the rapidity of spread and also its 14 day incubation period. We shall get together resources and overcome, surely. But could you examine the economic and geopolitical outcome post-CoVID 19. While you just touched upon it, could you and few intellectuals do some forecasting? Would throw up interesting scenarios.
The entire point of the argument is that this isn't a black swan, and governments are wrong to try to suggest it is
THANK YOU... I have been saying exactly this and appreciate your writing it! Apart from any "Monday morning quarterbacking" (as said in the U.S.), pandemic risks are and have been known... Trump closed what was a pandemic team that existed in the White House.
I have been thinking about this a lot. Why were governments not more prepared? It probably has to do with the election cycle. "Why advocate for legislation requiring billions in spending on something that might not even happen when I am in office?" With the possible exception of defense, legislation is reactive.
I broadly agree but:
1. Preparedness doesn't cost anywhere near billions. It builds over time and you add and upgrade every year.
2.Exactly same argument worked for nuclear deterrents following a major loss of life so there may be greater appetite.
You do realize that such studies and their incendiary content are grist to the nationalist mill that in turn contributes to making global responses more difficult?
I think that is a debatable point. Because the view of the scientific establishment is that systems risks need to be tackled systemically.
The experience after the global financial crisis was exactly that. Basel III was a multi-lateral, multi-stakeholder response rather than nationalist.
So not only do I not realise, I don't agree.
While the scientific community may have a valid POV, (and I'm not disputing that at all,) the recent political agenda has been to downplay if not ridicule the expert view. In this scenario, attributing (even ever so slightly) the likelihood of another pandemic to specific habits of a specific population provides the blame game meat on which nationalism thrives.
This is a particular favorite of Trump as he sees the world as little more than a series of game shows with him as the ringmaster. He doesn't need to refer to the academic studies because once he makes the kind of statement that he and Pence have been spouting, (and which ironically is supported by statements included in the referenced research), others can readily come to his aid by pointing to the predictions AND the specificity of those same predictions.
But above that, I'd like to know how the global scientific community will come to a consensus on how this is tackled when what we currently see is ideological division standing in the way.
If, as is suggested in the referenced article, there is a clear line of sight back to exotic culinary tastes in a particular part of the world, just how will the global scientific community, along with politicians in China arrive at a way to tackle the problems that is palatable (sic) to the rest of the world?
Contributions to such programmes should be communicated as insurance premiums. Without such insurance we are making these payouts from future earnings of our children and grandchildren. No wonder they want to congregate in parks and don't care if we die :-)