It will. A pandemic response requires cooperation and coordination around the world. The USA will not cooperate with anyone, and the most deluded antivaxers are going to be the running US health policy this time. RFK wants to defund vaccine research, dismantle scientific institutions and withdraw even well established vaccines from the market. So any virus that starts to circulate will find a huge pool of unvaccinated people in the USA, where it can continue to circulate and mutate and reinfect other countries.
And from what I’ve read, the bird flu has a human mortality rate of about 51%, compared to COVID which was around 1 or 2%. With luck, that will actually prevent it spreading too widely, but it could be very bad even if it becomes less aggressive. And clearly it’s capable of spreading widely in other species while maintaining a very high mortality rate. So the world needs to be very ready, not arguing about whether the medicines that have protected people from serious disease for hundreds of years should be abandoned because some guy’s brain worm told him so.
It will. A pandemic response requires cooperation and coordination around the world. The USA will not cooperate with anyone, and the most deluded antivaxers are going to be the running US health policy this time. RFK wants to defund vaccine research, dismantle scientific institutions and withdraw even well established vaccines from the market. So any virus that starts to circulate will find a huge pool of unvaccinated people in the USA, where it can continue to circulate and mutate and reinfect other countries.
And from what I’ve read, the bird flu has a human mortality rate of about 51%, compared to COVID which was around 1 or 2%. With luck, that will actually prevent it spreading too widely, but it could be very bad even if it becomes less aggressive. And clearly it’s capable of spreading widely in other species while maintaining a very high mortality rate. So the world needs to be very ready, not arguing about whether the medicines that have protected people from serious disease for hundreds of years should be abandoned because some guy’s brain worm told him so.