Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
After SARS: A New Virus in Saudi Arabia Underscores the Need to Police Disease in Animals
By Bryan Walsh
March 19, 2013
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Daszak notes that the Saudi coronavirus seems unlikely to be anything more than an isolated threat. But as more and more people crowd the planet ? and as we push back forests and other wildlife habitats, putting us in ever closer contact with a range of new and potentially germ-filled species ? the danger from emerging diseases is only likely to grow. ?You have five new diseases emerging each year, and that rate is increasing,? says Daszak. ?We have to be able to increase our surveillance.? The truth is that as bad as SARS was ? the disease killed nearly 1,000 people and cost tens of billions of dollars worth of damage ? we were lucky that the outbreak was as mild as it was, just as we were lucky with the relatively weak influenza pandemic of 2009 (which, don?t forget, initially spread to human beings from pigs). It?s unlikely we?ll be so lucky every time.
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Full text:
http://science.time.com/2013/03/19/...d-to-police-disease-in-animals/#ixzz2O2FncIEZ
By Bryan Walsh
March 19, 2013
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We don?t know whether this virus has the capability to trigger a full epidemic. We are completely in the dark about it. We think what we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg, but we don?t know how big the iceberg is, or where the iceberg is.
What Fouchier is saying is true for emerging pathogens more generally. Animal health gets just a fraction of the resources that human health does, which is why we are rarely able to detect new viruses before it?s too late and they?ve already crossed the species barrier. In the wake of SARS and the avian flu flare-ups over the past decade, however, that is beginning to change. I?ve written before about the virologist Nathan Wolfe and his Global Viral Forecasting group, which tries to use on-the-ground surveillance and computer modeling to predict when and where new viruses will emerge to threaten the human race. But there other groups working to police the boundaries between human and animal health, and one of them ? the New York City?based EcoHealth Alliance ? has a new paper out that demonstrates just how many unknown coronaviruses are out there, competing to be the next SARS. ?This is really critical stuff,? says Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth. ?It was on the back burner, but with SARS and everything after, it?s become a major concern.?
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Daszak notes that the Saudi coronavirus seems unlikely to be anything more than an isolated threat. But as more and more people crowd the planet ? and as we push back forests and other wildlife habitats, putting us in ever closer contact with a range of new and potentially germ-filled species ? the danger from emerging diseases is only likely to grow. ?You have five new diseases emerging each year, and that rate is increasing,? says Daszak. ?We have to be able to increase our surveillance.? The truth is that as bad as SARS was ? the disease killed nearly 1,000 people and cost tens of billions of dollars worth of damage ? we were lucky that the outbreak was as mild as it was, just as we were lucky with the relatively weak influenza pandemic of 2009 (which, don?t forget, initially spread to human beings from pigs). It?s unlikely we?ll be so lucky every time.
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Full text:
http://science.time.com/2013/03/19/...d-to-police-disease-in-animals/#ixzz2O2FncIEZ