Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics
The world witnessed the severe humanitarian and economic repercussions of pandemic pathogens during COVID-19 crisis, and we remain dangerously unprepared for future pandemics.
With the rate of zoonotic pathogen spread increasing and rapid technological advances in synthetic biology and AI, there exists the possibility of far deadlier pandemics, but also new opportunities to defend against them.
This podcast is from the Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics course, which covers technical and policy efforts to prevent, detect and respond to catastrophic pandemics.
Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics
Pandemic Prevention as Fire-Fighting
This article introduces a range of strategies to reduce pandemic risk whilst drawing parallels to fire-fighting interventions. It argues that pandemic prevention, like fire-fighting, needs a comprehensive approach that includes prevention, early detection, and both passive and active protection. It underscores that proactive pandemic preparedness measures are significantly less costly, both in financial terms and lives lost, compared to reactive responses. It's worth highlighting the need for global cooperation to implement suggested interventions, given the rapid and borderless nature of pandemics.
Original text:
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/pandemic-prevention-as-fire-fighting
Author(s):
Richard Williamson