Study projects prevention would be only 5% of the cost
Duke University
We can pay now or pay far more later. That's the takeaway of a new peer-reviewed study, published Feb. 4 in the journal Science Advances, that compares the costs of preventing a pandemic to those incurred trying to control one.
"It turns out prevention really
is the best medicine," said Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke Professor of Conservation
Ecology at Duke University, who was co-lead author of the study. "We
estimate we could greatly reduce the likelihood of another pandemic by
investing as little as 1/20th of the losses incurred so far
from COVID into conservation measures designed to help stop the spread of these
viruses from wildlife to humans in the first place."
A smart place to start, the study
shows, would be investing in programs to end tropical deforestation and
international wildlife trafficking, stop the wild meat trade in China, and
improve disease surveillance and control in wild and domestic animals
worldwide.
COVID, SARS, HIV, Ebola and many
other viruses that have emerged in the last century originated in wild places
and wild animals before spreading to humans, the study's authors note. Tropical
forest edges where humans have cleared more than 25% of the trees for farming
or other purposes are hotbeds for these animal-to-human virus transmissions, as
are markets where wild animals, dead or alive, are sold.
"The bottom line is, if we don't stop destroying the environment and selling wild species as pets, meat or medicine, these diseases are just going to keep coming. And as this current pandemic shows, controlling them is inordinately costly and difficult," Pimm said. "It's been two years since COVID emerged and the cure still isn't working. Not enough people are vaccinated in the U.S, where shots are available and we can afford them, and not enough vaccines are going to other countries that can't afford them."
The new study, by epidemiologists,
economists, ecologists, and conservation biologists at 21 institutions,
calculates that by investing an amount equal to just 5% of the estimated annual
economic losses associated with human deaths from COVID into environmental
protection and early-stage disease surveillance, the risks of future zoonotic
pandemics could be reduced by as much as half. That could help save around 1.6
million lives a year and reduce mortality costs by around $10 trillion
annually.
"We're talking about an
investment of tens of billions of dollars a year. Government have that kind of
money," Pimm said.
One key recommendation of the new
study is to use some of this money to train more veterinarians and wildlife
disease biologists.
Another key recommendation is to
create a global database of virus genomics that could be used to pinpoint the
source of newly emerging pathogens early enough to slow or stop their spread,
and, ultimately, speed the development of vaccines and diagnostic tests.
Aaron Bernstein of Boston Children's
Hospital and the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Andrew Dobson of Princeton
University were co-lead authors of the study with Pimm.
The need to put preventive measures
in place as soon as possible is increasingly urgent, said Dobson.
"Epidemics are occurring more frequently, they are getting larger, and
spreading to more continents."
"Prevention is much cheaper
than cures," noted Bernstein. Compared to the costs and social and
economic disruptions associated with trying to control pathogens after they
have already spread to humans, "preventing epidemics before they break out
is the ultimate economic bargain."
Researchers at 17 additional
universities, medical centers, environmental nonprofits or government agencies
in the United States, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Kenya coauthored the
study.
The coauthors include Binbin V. Li,
assistant professor of environmental science at Duke Kunshan University in
China, who holds a secondary appointment at Duke's Nicholas School of the
Environment.
Funding for the study came from
Johnson & Johnson; the U.S. Department of Agriculture; the Norwegian Agency
for Development Cooperation; Brazil's National Institute for Scientific and
Technological Development; the U.S. Agency for International Development, and
the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
