Our collective ability, internationally, to deal with pandemics is negligible. All of this social engineering is not a solution, it's like squeezing Japanese commuters onto the subway and giving them discount tokens instead of building another subway line.
To deal with the inevitability of epidemics and pandemics of the more lethal pathogens that we already know exist will require way more strategic thought and invention. For what it's worth, if you'd like to spin it with your global warming fascinations, just think about what becomes tropical which is now merely temperate. That means mosquitoes - which means Dengue, Malaria, Zika, Chikengunya and yes, Ebola, all of which are mutating all of the time.
Everyone who has noticed that the administration has cut the budget of the NSC Office of National Health Security and Bioterrorism needs to understand that its budget was under $400 million in 2018, 1/3rd of which was lefteover from Ebola funding. That office would have made no material difference if Congress was not considering spending tens of billions for the kinds of strategic reserves and extensive wargaming required for dealing with pathogens *that we already know exist*.
Take MERS for example. We already know that it will inevitably spread from Saudi Arabia to the rest of the world. We also already know that it lives in the camel populations of the Arabian peninsula and East Africa. So what would it take for the Congress to compensate the Middle East for the destruction of its camel population in order to eradicate the MERS we already know? Who has been talking about that, my pedigree chums?
What does this mean for the future of MERS? Well, I fear that MERS is only beginning to show its ugly head. There are more than 1.2 million dromedary camels in the Arabian Peninsula, and 78 percent of them are found in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Bactrian camels, the two-humped variety, reside primarily in China and Mongolia. Africa has an estimated 24 million camels, most of which are in the countries in the Horn of Africa, including Somalia (7 million), Sudan (4.9 million), and Kenya (3.2 million).
Osterholm, Michael T.. Deadliest Enemy (p. 170). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.
Camels are, in the Middle East, tantamount to what cows are in India. Their meat and their milk are consumed. Camels are bred for beauty contests and thoroughbred racing. You want to talk about science vs culture? Are you prepared to kill the sacred camel? Probably not. So please stop pretending you want anything more than your $1000 paycheck from the government, OK?
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