Can we count on Trump, Musk and RFK Jr. to learn these lessons?
Not based on what they've done so far
UC Davis Health
 |
| Pawel Kuczynski |
While COVID
is still with us, we now regard it as a manageable disease. But as the current
avian flu outbreak reminds us, the risk for a new pandemic is always present.
UC Davis Health Chief of Infectious Diseases Stuart
Cohen shares what lessons COVID has taught us that will help us
better respond next time.
Surveillance and sharing information
As COVID recedes
in our collective worries, we in the scientific and medical communities know
that there inevitably will be another pandemic someday. According to the Center
for Global Development, the annual
likelihood of a pandemic is 2–3%, which means a 47–57% probability
of another deadly pandemic in the next 25 years. Luckily, COVID taught us some
lessons that — if we heed them — will help us deal with the next pandemic.
First, COVID pointed out the importance of early
identification and warning systems. In late 2019, people involved in pandemic
preparedness knew something was lurking in Asia and were worried. Chances are
that the next pandemic will also be a zoonotic
disease — that is, something that jumps from animals to humans.
Since I started working in Infectious Diseases in 1981,
we’ve seen HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, MERS, the H1N1 flu and
now COVID-19, all of which were zoonotic in origin. Except for HIV, they’re all
transmitted via the airborne or droplet route, so they spread from person to
person more easily.
We need surveillance systems that can identify these species
jumps at an early stage and warn people that a potential health threat is
coming.
Cooperation between veterinarians and physicians who work in
human medicine is extremely important. That’s something we do well at UC Davis.
Between our School of
Veterinary Medicine and our School of Medicine,
we have a highly collaborative, cohesive group working on pandemic
preparedness.
Developing tests quickly
Second, thanks to COVID, we also know the importance of
speedily developing diagnostic tests — and making them quickly and widely
available. During the early days of COVID-19, we were behind the eight ball
because the test rollout was so slow. Once we got tests into laboratories the
turnaround time for a result was slow and we didn’t have enough spare tests to
do surveillance to figure out how far the disease had spread. That’s an area
that must improve before the next pandemic hits.
This means more and better collaboration between academia
and the diagnostics companies. More government funding would also be helpful
for development of technology that is easily adaptable to identification of a
new pathogen.
Treatment and prevention
Third, we will need to quickly develop treatments and
prevention strategies. When AIDS first appeared in the early 1980s, we went
almost two years before we knew what caused the disease, another year and a
half until there was a diagnostic test, and decades until effective treatments
and preventive drugs were developed.
Science is much faster now. With COVID, we saw how the mRNA
platforms enabled industry to develop vaccines. Those platforms are adaptable
and flexible and will be key in dealing with the next pandemic. Drug
development also occurred at an expeditious pace, initially focused on treating
the sickest patients but later for those who were not as severely ill but had
the risk of progressing.
‘A team sport’
Finally, to fight the next pandemic, we will have to enlist
and engage the public. If there’s one thing COVID taught us, it’s that everyone
needs to be part of the solution. Misinformation and mistrust made fighting
COVID more difficult than it needed to be.
The scientific community definitely made some missteps
during COVID. With a new disease, you can’t know everything about it. We in the
science world have to be transparent about what we know and what we are still
learning. Transparency helps increase scientists’ credibility and keeps people
engaged.
Knowledge is power. During the pandemic, I participated in
livestreamed public town halls with Olivia Kasirye, the public health officer
for Sacramento County. Members of the public got to ask questions — and they
were good questions. People came up to me afterward and said they really
appreciated the information we brought to them.
Combating the next pandemic will be a team sport. It will
take the combined efforts of the medical and science communities and the public
to save lives and deal with the pandemic that comes next.
