UN secretary-general: there is a “very real threat” of a pandemic killing up to 80 million. A deadly pathogen, spread airborne could wipe out 5 percent of the global economy. We’re not ready. The analysis was compiled by an independent panel, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, convened by the World Bank and WHO. Co-chaired by former WHO head and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and head of the international Red Cross, Elhadj As Sy, experts issued a scathing attack on the political, financial, and logistical state of pandemic preparedness.
In May 1989, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg gathered fellow Nobelists and virus-hunters for a 3-day DC meeting considering a bold hypothesis that viruses, far from being vanquished by modern medicine, were actually surging worldwide in animals and people, often in forms never previously seen.
At foreignpolicy.com
