Nobody wants to think about it, but another pandemic is inevitable. We don’t know when, but it is coming, and could well kill millions when it arrives.
Pandemics are existential threats to society and our way of life. In the past 108 years, novel viruses with pandemic potential have arisen at least 10 times, five of these in the last 16 years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed 1.1 million Americans and left 20 million with long-term health problems.
A large reservoir of worrisome viruses with the potential to jump to humans exists in many animals, particularly bats, rodents and birds. And these viruses are now emerging from nature more frequently, due primarily to climate change and encroachment on animal habitats. While we know of threats presented by mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) and several influenza viruses, many others are still out there waiting for us to find them.
As one of the world’s most scientifically advanced countries, the United States should take the lead in preparing for pandemics, but it is currently abdicating that responsibility. On Jan. 30, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya promised a “complete transformation” of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, dismissing traditional studies, including pandemic preparedness.
Bhattacharya’s move is only the latest in the administration’s abandonment of pandemic preparedness. In 2019, the first administration of President Donald Trump defunded the pandemic early warning system that tracked emerging diseases. This program trained staff in 60 foreign laboratories to detect pandemic viruses. Its loss creates a dangerous void in national and global health security.
If that were not enough, the gutting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has wreaked havoc on pathogen monitoring and pandemic preparedness. The damage is compounded by the administration’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), depriving the U.S. of valuable pathogen monitoring and rapid response capabilities.
While the U.S. response to COVID-19 certainly wasn’t perfect, it did save lives. One thing that Trump got right was in his administration’s push to develop a vaccine quickly. Between December 2020 and November 2022, it is estimated that the United State’s COVID-19 vaccination program prevented more than 18.5 million hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths.
Yet under Kennedy’s destructive leadership, HHS, CDC and NIH no longer see pandemic viruses as significant threats. In fact, Kennedy does not believe that viruses and bacteria are a major cause of infectious disease. Presently the U.S. is not monitoring pandemic viruses or the rising cases of vaccine-preventable diseases and H5N1 influenza infections, also known as bird flu. This vital information is being minimized for political reasons, before this fall’s midterm elections.
Let’s be realistic: A future pandemic virus is coming, probably sooner rather than later. Thanks to this administration, not only are we unprepared, but post-pandemic U.S. restrictions on pandemic virus research will make it difficult for scientists to study it. Additionally, restrictions on mRNA vaccine research, which produced the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, will make it impossible to quickly create new vaccines. The U.S. will be beholden to other countries for basic knowledge about the virus, as well as vaccines and drugs to treat it. This is both a dire public health threat and a national security problem.
How do we better prepare for the next pandemic, or for the rise in known vaccine-preventable diseases that we are already seeing? The present political milieu, with conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine rhetoric and anti-science attitudes at the highest levels of government, makes it difficult, so fixing the damage will take a major change in our government.
Congress should create an agency to monitor and respond to emerging diseases and pandemics, as well as rising cases of known diseases. It would work with other federal agencies and international agencies like the WHO. Importantly, the agency should have autonomy to develop and implement science-based responses. And it should be a permanent agency that cannot be dismantled or interfered with by politicians hostile to science.
Defending against emerging diseases is literally a matter of life and death. Our government’s negligence endangers us.
