Continuing Zoonotic Pandemics Loom Because of Lack of Prevention
"The health, societal, and economic shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic compel consideration of preventing similar future pandemic disasters," write 20 researchers in the February 4 , 2022 issue of Science Advances. Yet in its 2020 "World in Disorder," report, the World Bank and the World Health Organization's Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (charged with "preparedness for global health crises") makes no mention of preventionof pandemics which are often spillover of viruses from animals to humans .
Despite the COVID-19 death toll, despite two books that predicted the spillover pandemic -- Spillover by David Quammen and The Pandemic Century by Mark Honigsbaum -- the world response continues to be to "diagnose, treat, and quickly vaccinate after diseases emerge" rather than prevention write the researchers, who come from five continents. For example, a high-level G-20 panel on "Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response" does not even address prevention, they write, but rather financing of post-spillover activities.
The cost to prevent the next pandemic is only a tenth of treating one write the researchers and they offer detailed economic schematics in their paper. Moreover, the causes of spillover epidemics are abundantly clear and easily addressed: the wildlife trade and hunting; agricultural intensification/ expansion and the loss of tropical forests/deforestation.
High-density livestock operations, farming of wild animals and the wildlife trade are growing spillover risks, write the researchers, and the size of the latter is dramatic.
"The wildlife trade alone ensnares a quarter of all mammal species"The wild animal biomass consumed is also large. In 2010, the annual take of wild animals from the Congo and Amazon basins was between 1.3 million and 4.5 million metric tons, respectively. (These are the equivalent weight of 1.8 and 6.2 million cows.)"Globally, wildlife hunting pressure threatens more than 300 terrestrial mammal species with extinction."
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