Disease X is a disease that could cause a pandemic due to a currently unknown pathogen. What is fresh in our memory is that the COVID-19 pandemic has been slowly experiencing some setbacks and tragedies. This coronavirus can disappear and then reappear, endemic under the control of a vaccine, or simply darken and disappear.
The economy and the medical system will return to a new normal, some aspects will be faster than others. Like the multiple disasters that humans have suffered since our ancestors gathered in the city – warning an investigation issued by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) – this pandemic will lead to a slow and incorrect response, will speculate.
And the condemnation of exaggerated or inappropriate responses to economic, social and health events is obvious in hindsight.
The individuals and organizations most guilty of exacerbating the disaster They will escape responsibility as they scapegoat others and try to rewrite history. heroes, Whether it’s people who helped provide clear risk communication and leadership or groups who persevered in the face of life-threatening fear and danger, they are going to excel. No fanfare most will return to their normal jobs, scarred but proud of their efforts. As they have done before, experts and scholars will write endlessly about the cause, effects, and ways to ameliorate the brutal destruction of lives and ways of life from the next pandemic.
“The problem is that we have done all this before and it seems that we have not learned the lessons that our predecessors taught,”the doctor warns Kenneth V. Iserson, Professor of Emergency Medicine, Director of the Arizona Bioethics Program at the University of Arizona School of Medicine and lead author of the research.
For most people, the new coronavirus appears to be an anomaly; it is not. The 20th century began with devastating waves of spanish flu what killed 50 million to 100 million people all over the world. About one new disease emerges each year. Not all have person-to-person transmission, but they do have it to scare those tasked with monitoring global health.
To highlight the danger and prioritize investigation, Each year the World Health Organization (WHO) commissions a committee of experts to update its list of the most threatening infectious diseases that lack effective treatments or vaccines. The current list includes COVID-19, since the entire world is now focused on that pathogen. “What should act as a wake-up call to seriously fund surveillance, research and treatment of the wide variety of potential pandemic agents is the entity at the bottom of the short list: ‘disease X’”, holds Iserson.
Since 2015, WHO has used this designation to a disease that could cause a pandemic due to a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease. Last year’s disease X now has a name: COVID-19. However, the next unknown and nameless entity may already be on the prowl.
One might wonder….Why don’t we come up with a plan to identify these pathogens early and mobilize scientists, the health community, politicians, and the public to combat these scourges? The answer is that we already have. We know what steps to take to limit a pandemic. WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services have developed and released detailed plans.
“After the pandemic of SARS, for example, WHO detailed the steps necessary to control a pandemic. These vital steps were ignored during the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic. WHO suffers from chronic underfunding, has to endure a bloated, slow and uncoordinated bureaucracy that has to answer to 194 countries. He has been convicted of both overreacting (2009 H1N1 pandemic) and overreacting (2014 Ebola epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic) and failing to act. The CDC they are chronically underfunded and have no political power. Academics are voices in the desert whose advice is generally sought too late in the process to have much effect, ”says the specialist.
“As the threat of COVID-19 decreases, politicians will make big promises to implement plans to stop, or at least prepare for, the next pandemic. The recovering economy will be too weak at first to support the effort, although more funds will be promised in the future. As a last resort, they will make changes that are politically expedient and will not authorize the changes necessary to produce faster and more flexible responses. Memories of heartbreak and social disruption during COVID-19 will fade. Our strongholds against pandemic diseases will continue to be underfunded and inadequate for the task.
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