64 TheEconomistJune 27th 2020
1I
n february 2018a panel of experts con-
vened by the World Health Organisation
(who) put together a list of diseases that
posed big public-health risks but for which
there were few or no countermeasures. It
featured various well-recognised threats,
including Ebola, sars, Zika and Rift Valley
fever. But it also included “Disease X”.
This illness, caused by a pathogen never
before seen in humans, would, the panel
said, emerge from animals somewhere in a
part of the world where people had en-
croached on wildlife habitats. It would be
more deadly than seasonal influenza but
would spread just as easily between people.
By hitching rides on travel and trade net-
works, it would journey beyond its conti-
nent of origin within weeks of its emer-
gence. It would cause the world’s next big
pandemic, and leave economic and social
devastation in its wake.
Indeed.
Less than two years after the report waspublished Disease X turned up. It began
late last year in Wuhan, China, and the wid-
er world became aware of it in January. It
has now infected nearly 10m people and
killed almost 500,000 of them. That death
toll is also likely to reach seven figures be-
fore things are over. For Disease X now has
a name: covid-19.I told you so
Though perhaps the loudest, the who’s was
not the only warning that something like
this might happen. Moreover, some of the
prophets, such as Peter Daszak, a disease
ecologist who is head of an independent
research organisation called the EcoHealth
Alliance, specifically focused on the risk
posed by bat-borne coronaviruses, as sars-
cov-2, the cause of covid-19, has turned out
to be. And the point of issuing those warn-
ings was preparedness. With the correct
systems in place a potential pandemic,
spotted early, might be nipped in the bud.Instead, the world’s response to the new
illness has been similar to its response to
sarsin 2002 and, after that, to h5n1 avian
influenza in 2005. This is to move into a
costly panic mode intended to slow the
spread of the disease while scientists race
to develop a vaccine. “This,” as Dr Daszak,
observes wryly, “is not a plan.”
To see Disease X simply as a warning
about covid-19 that the world ignored is,
though, to miss the point that the who
panel was making. Disease X was also a
warning about Disease Y, and after it Dis-
ease Z. It was a warning about aspects of
modern life that encourage the spread of
previously unknown pathogens like sars-
cov-2. As long as these matters are not ad-
dressed, the risk will remain of further zoo-
notic outbreaks, in which a pathogen
passes from animals to human beings, and
then from human to human in the expo-
nential way now sadly familiar.
Dr Daszak’s point is that the matters in
question can and should be dealt with. Fu-
ture zoonotic outbreaks are surely inevita-
ble. But with the right precautions it should
be possible to ensure that they do not, as
the current one has, lead to pandemics.
The precautions Dr Daszak and his col-
leagues have in mind add up to a three-lay-
ered defence. The first layer is a worldwide
effort to find and track the hundreds of
thousands of as-yet-unseen pathogensDisease surveillancePandemic-proofing the planet
New diseases are inevitable. Ensuing global calamities do not have to beScience & technology