WEBVTT - Special Episode: Understanding Pandemics 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:08.360 Welcome to a special extended edition of Prognosis Daily Coronavirus. 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:12.640 I'm Jason Gale, a senior editor with Bloomberg News. Now 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:15.840 that the coronavirus has become a household name, we want 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:19.160 to take a deeper look into how pandemic spread. If 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:20.880 you want to learn more about what's happening day to 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:23.320 day when it comes to the coronavirus, be sure to 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:27.000 check out our feed for a daily podcast. But on 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:30.840 this episode, we're diving deep into the scary world of pandemics. 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:34.640 What are they exactly, where did they come from, and 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.360 why are they occurring more frequently. We're going to meet 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.440 some of the world's most experienced pandemic experts, the men 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:43.839 and women on the front lines of the battle to 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:56.520 contain COVID nineteen and other global scourges. Dr Michael Ryan 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.880 is like the chief firefighter of global health. If you 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:04.360 people are busier than this barely affable Irishman. Mike leads 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:08.319 the Emergency's program at the World Health Organization. The United 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:12.880 Nations Agency has provided specialist technical advice and set guidelines 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:18.080 and standards on international health matters. Since Mike is also 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.200 the crisis manager of a United Nations team to address 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:24.600 the pneumonia causing disease that erupted in China at the 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:28.080 end of last year. COVID nineteen triggered a global health 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:32.039 emergency and made coronavirus, the virus that causes it, a 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:36.360 household name. COVID nineteen is the latest and possibly most 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:41.920 important outbreak that Mike has ever tried to extinguish. For 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:44.920 almost twenty five years, he's been at the forefront of 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:48.440 some of the most significant disease outbreaks. The job has 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.600 taken him across Central Africa for more than a dozen 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:55.760 Ebola epidemics alone, but never in his career as he 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:59.840 faced such a rapid spreading, novel disease on a global scale. 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:03.840 It's also a job he never expected to be doing. 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:07.920 Mike said out in life to become an orthopedic surgeon, 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:12.600 but a terrible motorcycle accident in his twenties intervened. While 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:16.360 recuperating from a broken back, he recalled an earlier stint 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:19.200 in Kenya and how he could apply his skills in 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:24.760 public health. Instead. Fit chose to throw me into public health. 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:27.679 But as my grandmother once said to me, only a 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.440 grandmother can say this probably the best thing that ever 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.400 happened to your son, you know. Mike wound up working 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:36.800 with Dr David Hayman, who's like them, Mick Jagger of 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:41.639 Disease Detectives. Before becoming a professor of infectious disease epidemiology 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:46.520 in London, David tackled smallpox, polio, a bowler and legionnaire's disease, 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.520 just to mention a few. In the early two thousand's, 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.400 David led the World Health Organization's response to severe acute 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:58.680 respiratory syndrome or STARS. He was working at the w 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:01.639 h O in Geneva and he was introduced to Mike Ryan. 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:04.959 David had been asked by the Director General to set 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:08.600 up a program in emerging infectious diseases. He was looking 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:12.200 over some epidemiological data collected in the mid nineties seventies 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:14.960 from an a bowler outbreak and kick with in the 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:19.320 southwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo microcall 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:22.560 is being dragged into an impromptu meeting. At the end 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.519 of it, David recognized Mike as somebody could use in 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:28.200 the field. Then he worked out a way to get 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.720 Mike on his team. I got traded. You're not like 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:34.800 in baseball when you don't know the coach just called 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:37.240 you in and says, back your bags, you're going to Minnesota. 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:42.920 That's what happened to me. Fast forward twenty four years, 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:46.920 and this imposing former rugby player now commands an expanded 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:51.040 band of the disease equivalent of global firefighters. On any 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:54.880 one day, they're tackling over thirty outbreaks and natural disasters. 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:59.160 They are the first responders to the planet's biggest, scariest, 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:04.040 and off most complex health crises. Each year, the team 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:08.680 is facing newer and bigger demands. They're happening everywhere, and 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.280 they're happening all the time. Mike says, we have an 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.800 eclectic background of people because you know, we have larger stitions. 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:21.000 We have communicators, we have viologous clinicians, we have epidemiologies, 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:23.920 we have so many different people. The diversity of team 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:27.679 members reflects the complexity of these health events. The last 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:30.960 a Bowler outbreak, for example, occurred in a conflict zone 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:34.560 that made it often dangerous to vaccinate people and to 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:36.960 trace people known to have been in contact with an 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:42.200 infected individual. Navigating the unique challenges that each outbreak brings 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.560 comes down to accumulative knowledge and practical know how. There's 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:49.640 no training for a crisis response. The only training that 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:55.120 really matters and crisis management is experienced and you know 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:58.080 that is where you learn, when you make the mistakes 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:01.400 and you learn from them. And that's the hard thing 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:03.760 in crisis managers, just coming to terms with the fact 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:06.359 that you won't always be right. You will always have 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:09.080 to make a decision before you have enough data. And 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:12.000 it's really easy for the armitude generals to sit on 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.760 the side and pitching because they have no accountability for 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:20.080 the outcome. And it's easy for the retrospector scopes to 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:22.440 be taken out afterwards and say, surely you wouldn't have 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:24.000 done that. Of course I wouldn't have done that if 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:25.800 I had known what I know now. But what I 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:28.680 knew then was this. And that's the hard part of 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:31.800 crisis manage The easy part is all the science a bit. 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.919 The hard part is taking responsibility, becoming accountable for the 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:42.400 decisions you make, because you're taking communities health into your hands, 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.400 you're taking the lives of your own staff into your hands. 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:51.840 We only need to look at the current COVID nine 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:56.320 team pandemic to see the political ramifications of disease outbreaks, 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.839 and there are hard choices of crisis management to be 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:04.520 made in almost any public health threat. In two thousand 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:07.279 and nine, a new strain of H one N one 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:12.320 influenza emerged in Mexico. It was incubated in pigs but 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:16.559 managed to jump across into people. It sparked a large 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:20.839 epidemic that quickly spread globally in what constituted the first 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:24.760 flu pandemic in more than forty years. And this new 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:29.600 swine flu contagion spooked the world's flu experts. It wasn't 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.679 what they had been expecting at all. Virologists had thought 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:37.200 the next pandemic would have come from bird flu one 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:39.560 that had first popped up in a farmed goose and 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:45.040 southern China, and spread a decade later across Asia than 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:49.280 to Europe and Africa. That avian flu virus, known as 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:52.159 Age five in one, killed about two thirds of the 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.240 people who caught it, But the virus never morphed into 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:59.320 a form that was easily transmissible among people, so the 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:05.000 pandemics scientists were expecting never happened, and when swine flu 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:10.120 came along, world health authorities were blamed for overreacting. Nobel 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.960 Prize winning immunologist Peter Doherty says the H one N 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:18.360 one swine flu was designated a pandemic because it was 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:22.360 a virus humanity hadn't encountered in that form before. It 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:25.560 was actually two pig viruses that got together, though some 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.280 of the components of that virus went right back to 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:35.440 the ninety name pandemic virus and it was This is 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:41.080 part of the problem people automatically associate with pandemic shock horror, 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:44.000 We're all going to die, which may not be totally 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:46.840 unreasonable with the wou and virus, but a lot of 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:49.400 people may die if it really blows and we don't 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:54.880 get a vaccine or therapeutics quickly. But the because it 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:58.680 was called a pandemic, people are expecting a very severe infection. 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:01.440 And we'd already had all this discussion about the H 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:04.240 five in one bird flu, which didn't go anywhere. But 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:06.720 I think we were right to try and prepare for it, 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:09.920 but it didn't jump. It just shows how really out 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:12.880 poorly we still understand these things. Even though a lot 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:16.920 of efforts gone into understanding why some viruses crossing some done. 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:20.280 It's not just a chance. So um so when they 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.760 announced was a pandemic. Of course, everyone said, oh, we're 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.520 in for a terrible time, but it actually turned out 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.280 to be that it was very, very infectious. It was 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:31.880 no worse than the usual seasonal flu. So then everyone 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:34.320 got angry because they said, well, w h O has 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.959 been lying to us and calling a pandemic. The pandemic 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:41.000 strain now circulates as part of the flu viruses that 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:44.840 cause seasonal epidemics. The H one N one virus still 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:48.680 causes a lot of hospitalizations and even debts each year, 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:51.760 but people by and large don't react to it with 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:54.320 the same level of alarm that they did when it 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:57.680 emerged more than a decade ago. Some people have looked 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:00.480 back and said, oh, you you public healthy will sounded 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.679 a false alarm with H one N one. This is 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:08.559 Ductor's Home. Freedom, President and CEO of Resolved to Save Lives, 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:12.839 a global initiative of the NGO vital Strategies. He's also 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.680 a former director of the United States Sentence for Disease 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.240 Control and Prevention. Dr Freedom was Health Commissioner in New 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.720 York City during the H one and one pandemic, and 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:26.200 it is true that fewer people died in that pandemic 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:29.199 year than die in an average year that misses two 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.840 key points. One, a lot of kids died. The estimate 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:35.199 is dred kids in the US died because of H 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:38.840 one N one. That's a terrible tragedy, and to comparing 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:42.400 it to what shouldn't happen every year is kind of misguided. 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:47.040 Flu is the Rodney Danger field of diseases. Every year. 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.120 It hospitalizes millions of people, kills thousands, tens of thousands, 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:53.840 sometimes hundreds of thousands of people in this country and 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.200 around the world, and yet we don't take it as 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:58.079 seriously as we should. Only half of people in the 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:00.760 US get a flu shot every year, and it's very 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:02.920 rare for people to get the kind of treatment that 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.439 they that might shorten the duration of their illness. So 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.440 with H one N one, there was, as there is 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:13.400 with many epidemics, a fog of war reality early on, 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:17.439 where you're getting reports in from many places, they're inconsistent. 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:21.360 It's hard to know who to believe. It's confusing at first, 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:28.280 and it's only with really meticulous epidemiology understanding how it spreads, 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.560 how readily it spreads, how severe the disease is, in 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:34.280 depth studies that you can get a better sense of 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:36.920 what is the real burden that this is going to cause. 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.960 When public health experts think of pathogens of pandemic potential, 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:46.400 it's typically the flu that comes to mind. Influenza is 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:51.160 really unparalleled in its ability to cause death and destruction 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:57.640 among all microbes. The paradigm is the nineteen flu pandemic, 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.320 which is estimated to have killed up to fifty million 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.520 people around the world. When you look at how bad 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.520 a pathogen is, you ask two questions. How easily does 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:12.239 it spread and how deadly is it. There are diseases 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:17.640 like rabies that are close to fatal but don't spread 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:20.960 all that readily, And there are diseases that spread quite 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:25.920 readily but don't cause death often. Flu is that rare 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:32.080 exception of a disease which spreads readily and can kill readily. Also, 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.880 and what we're concerned about with the novel coronavirus here 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:39.840 is that it could have that same deadly combination. The 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.000 term pandemic gets used to describe all kinds of things, 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:47.920 from HIV, AIDS two diabetes to tobacco related diseases. Many 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.880 of these aren't the rapid spreading contagions that spring to mind, 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:57.120 so I asked Tom, how does he define a pandemic. Generally, 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:02.240 a pandemic is an epidemic that's spreading in multiple parts 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:04.680 of the world, not necessarily all parts of the world, 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:08.559 but multiple parts of the world. And influenza meets that 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:14.959 definition because it predictably causes widespread disease in one hemisphere, 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:17.960 that in another hemisphere, and it circulates around the world. 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:23.559 Leaving aside their health impact, pandemics have tremendous political, economic, 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:27.720 and social consequences. Health is the biggest single impact of 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:31.480 many disasters and conflicts. More wars have been won and 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:36.320 lost by epidemics than ever by armies. Outbreaks provide not 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:39.440 just a look into the workings of the microbial world. 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:44.000 They're critical events that shape human history. My name is 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:48.800 Laurie Garrett. I go to epidemics. Laurie has been observing 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:53.240 and writing about disease outbreaks and pandemics since the seventies. 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:59.520 She is unrivaled in this specialist field of journalism. She 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:01.959 won a Bullet Surprise for a word chronicling in a 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:05.560 bolda outbreak and what's now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:10.959 I don't think there's anything as programmed in the human 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:16.320 DNA as the aversion to illness. You know, you think 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:18.960 about it makes sense right when we're out there as 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:24.040 Nomad's twenty thousand years ago, roaming around, if someone took 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:28.160 ill and then another took ill, you would flee, right, 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:31.040 you would just run away and leave them. And that's 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:34.720 how you survived. Didn't You didn't understand why it happened. 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.880 Could be the gods, could be anything but fear of contagion. 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:42.040 I think is is programmed. Laurie cut her teeth on 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:47.720 outbreaks in back then she was a scientist moonlighting in 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.880 public radio in San Francisco. That year, she was confronted 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:55.840 with a swine flu virus, an outbreak of legion as disease, 0:13:56.320 --> 0:14:00.880 and toxic shock syndrome linked to tampons through read big ones, 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:05.480 all in one twelve month period, and it was so 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:10.559 extreme that um Gerald Ford insisted that the head of 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:15.240 the CDC resign. He was essentially fired on camera on NBC. 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:21.680 And it was at a moment when Nixon had just 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:26.320 what five years earlier, created the War on Cancer, and 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:31.280 the whole country was riveted by the prospect of eliminating 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:35.840 cancer and heart disease, and nobody was talking about infectious anything. 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.880 It was all history. It was all some something other 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:45.040 people had problems with, not us, And then we have 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:48.640 this year boom. I was in grad school and I 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:52.200 was studying immunology. I was working in the lab at 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:55.720 Berkeley and Stanford, and on the side, as a hobby, 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:59.160 I was working on a local radio station doing science news. 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:02.880 You every now and then the wire machines, one of 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:06.120 the three or four would start banging, and you'd run 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:08.440 over and to see, you know, who just died or 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:11.400 where was there a coup? Or who just won the 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:15.240 World Series? And that would be about someplace I never 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:17.960 heard of, having an outbreak of something I never heard of, 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:21.840 and uh, nobody knowing what to do, and descriptions of 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:26.320 terror and fear and um befuddlement. And I thought this 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.640 was completely in contradiction to everything I was learning in 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:34.080 grad school. How could this be? And so slowly but 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:37.880 surely I got hooked. Laurie has written several books about 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.800 outbreaks and public health. Her first was The Coming Plague, 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:47.760 published in The Seven Fifty Pages, Laurie takes readers on 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:51.119 a fifty year journey through the world's battles with microbes. 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.720 She's found that most of the time, the real risks 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:58.440 have nothing to do with the pathogens. The danger is people, 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:04.160 specifically how they react to the threat. Anxiety, politics, greed 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:09.320 just a few recurrent themes. I see it everywhere all 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:12.520 the time. I mean every single epidemic and outbreak I've 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.640 ever been in. There are inappropriate political statements made that 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:23.480 are based on manipulating public fear. There are opportunistic politicians 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:27.920 that say the wrong things, do horrible things every epidemic. 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:31.520 There's religious people who say and do the wrong things 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:35.560 or declare that it's God's will or that if you 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:39.840 you can prey away your illness. Every epidemic, there's scoundrels 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:45.000 making money off it by selling bogus cures. Every single epidemic, 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:49.480 you have hoarding of goods, anything that somebody thinks will 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.720 protect them. They hoard the supplies um and suddenly you 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:58.800 have a mixture of organized crime and the response so 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:01.480 that you know the person trying to kill you just 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:05.000 might be a mobster who's ticked off because you discovered 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:11.480 his stockpile of syringes or masks. The current COVID nineteen 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:15.600 pandemic is a glaring example of the chaos and economic 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:20.240 cost these outbreaks cause. We've seen spurious treatments, run on 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:24.960 face masks and toilet paper, travel bands, and conspiracy theories 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:29.480 about the diseases origins. That is baffling as they are frustrating, 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:33.639 But where do outbreaks come from, how do they start? 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:45.080 And why are they occurring more frequently? Almost two thirds 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:49.040 of human infectious diseases are caused by pathogens shared with 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:53.520 wild or domestic animals. In recent decades, more and more 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:58.080 of these microbes have jumped this species barrier. In many instances, 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.639 these have gone on to spread to nationally, some globally. 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:06.520 Most of these have been viruses jumping from wildlife to humans. 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:12.679 Take HIV, which crossed the species barrier from great apes, 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:17.600 possibly as early as the nine twenties. In more recent decades, 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:21.520 neber virus, which can cause acute respiratory infection and fatal 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:25.639 and capelitas jumped from bats to pigs and then to 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:29.400 people in the late nines. Then a few years later 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:34.360 stars emerged, starting first in bats, moving to civets, a small, lean, 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:39.000 mostly nocturnal mammal, then jumped to humans in two thousand 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:42.840 and twelve. Mirce or Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome made the 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:46.919 jump from camels to humans. We think the current coronavirus 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:51.199 came from bats via some other intermediary host. But what 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:55.280 precipitates the cross species jump and what can be done 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.720 to prevent or mitigate it. I suppose the bottom line 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:02.080 is that man has just to another animal, and as 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:06.240 far as the virus is concerned, and so there is 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:11.600 nothing particularly special about viruses that infect humans are supposed 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:16.119 to those that infect animals. This is Professor Trevor Drew. 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.560 He's the director of the Australian Animal Health Laboratory at Geelong, 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:24.560 just outside of Melbourne. It's the Australian equivalent of the 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:28.840 US Government's Animal Disease Research Center on Plum Island, located 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:32.320 off the coast of New York. The Australian Lab has 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:37.119 one of the largest high bio containment facilities in the world. 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:40.800 It's been at the forefront of research on emerging viral 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:46.800 threats since the mid nine According to Trevor, changing environments 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:51.520 are driving a big change in viruses. Certainly, something that 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:56.400 we have seen time and again in the raising of animals, 0:19:56.440 --> 0:20:00.520 domestic animals is that if you intensify production, in other words, 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.160 if you put lots of animals together in a very 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:07.840 close space, the viruses tend to get more pathogenic, so 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:11.560 they create more disease because they are able to multiply 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.199 to a higher level, and it doesn't matter if they 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:19.320 kill their host, because the next host is right next door. 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:22.679 And particularly where you get animals all of the same age, 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.960 all of the same genetics, that can actually act as 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:30.639 an environmental driver towards higher pathogenicity. We see this in 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:35.320 animals time and again. From Trevor's perspective, the intensive way 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:39.080 livestock and seafood are being farmed is contributing to the 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:43.200 proliferation of dangerous pathogens. We find that if we put 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:47.119 large numbers of fish together, or cross staceans together, we 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.280 find that diseases which are really quite minor and only 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:54.119 seen occasionally in the wild suddenly become a big problem. 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:57.879 And again this is this This reinforces that hypothesis that 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:00.880 if you cram loads of animals to other you will 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:07.280 get increased pathogenicity. The same goes for humans. Crowded living 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:11.159 spaces can create opportunities for viruses to evolve into a 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:18.200 higher pathogenicity and increase the chances of spreading among human populations. Now, 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:21.880 if you then take the fact that humans are increasingly 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:27.000 encroaching into spaces where they previously haven't gone, it's inevitable 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:31.919 that they will more often encounter novel viruses in a 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.560 wildlife reservoir that has an opportunity to jump into the 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:39.240 human If we take the case of a bowler, the 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:43.040 virus has had been around in the in Western and 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:46.879 Central Africa for quite some time. It caused outbreaks and 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.560 then it seemed to attenuate itself. It it became less 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:55.040 virulent and disappeared because every outbreak before the big West 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:59.480 African heartbreak was in a rural environment. However, when the 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:04.840 virus emerged in Sierra Leone, it caused a big problem 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:09.080 in cities. And this is again because the humans are 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:14.919 close together, there's an easy opportunity for the abolavirus to 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:18.320 jump from host to host. An additional challenge is how 0:22:18.400 --> 0:22:23.560 interconnected the world has become global travelers in everyday reality, 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:27.040 a person can be exploring a cave in Africa one 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:30.639 day and bring home a lethal disease the next. We 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:33.080 saw an example in two thousand and eight when a 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:35.920 forty one year old woman died in the Netherlands from 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:40.440 marburg hamorrhagic fever, a viral infection similar to a bowler. 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:43.919 The Dutch woman had visited a bat infested cave in 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:47.600 Uganda a couple of weeks earlier. Her case highlighted the 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:51.639 role globalization is playing in the rapid spread of pathogens. 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:56.720 As Trevor Drew mentioned, We've got an even more dramatic 0:22:56.760 --> 0:23:00.000 example of that six years later, when a toddler from 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.680 a small village in Guinea was infected with ebola, probably 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:07.280 by a bat that was carrying the virus. Within months, 0:23:07.280 --> 0:23:10.440 the disease spread to Guinea's capital, Conakry, and then to 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:15.280 neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone. The epidemic in West Africa 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:19.720 was unprecedented because it ripped through densely populated urban centers 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:23.399 like wildfire. From two thousand and fourteen to two thousand 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:26.719 and sixteen, a bowl of virus disease spread to seven 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:31.959 more countries, including Italy, Nigeria, Spain, the United Kingdom, and 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:36.480 the United States. All up, almost twenty nine thousand people 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:41.480 were infected and over eleven thousand died. It demonstrated yet 0:23:41.520 --> 0:23:46.080 again the risk that international mobility and air travel posed 0:23:46.080 --> 0:23:50.760 to infection control, especially the panic that sets in when 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:55.480 infected people cross international borders. Here's the world health organizations 0:23:55.560 --> 0:23:58.960 Mike Ryan Again, I can argue to you whether globalization 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:01.600 is a good thing or a bad Let's accept it's 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:05.360 a good thing. Let's accept that creating a global architecture, 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:09.400 global movement of people, global movement of goods and services 0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:13.040 has been a good thing. It's driven economic growth if 0:24:13.040 --> 0:24:15.880 you like that kind of thing, and don't all of that. 0:24:16.160 --> 0:24:21.320 But with that, we've added risk, huge risks into the 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:25.640 global system. Um uh. And we're not doing anything to mitigate. 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:29.120 So if we're going to accept the globalization is good 0:24:29.280 --> 0:24:31.000 and we need to accept, what is the risks that 0:24:31.040 --> 0:24:33.240 have come with that? And how are those risks mitigated? 0:24:33.520 --> 0:24:37.200 How are they managed, reduced and mitigated? And preparedness reprodemics 0:24:37.200 --> 0:24:38.880 has to be seen as one of those. We've seen 0:24:38.920 --> 0:24:42.360 the other's climate stress, all of these things that are emerging, 0:24:42.840 --> 0:24:47.080 um and and I think we have to put a 0:24:47.119 --> 0:24:50.600 price on that. The nature of how we're disrupting our 0:24:50.720 --> 0:24:56.600 environment is constantly changing and worsening. Habitats are being altered 0:24:56.680 --> 0:25:01.200 and often diminished, putting humans in farm animal enclosed contact 0:25:01.240 --> 0:25:05.960 with wildlife. Laurie Garrett says it's providing an advantage for microbes, 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:09.359 resulting in diseases that really went an issue twenty or 0:25:09.400 --> 0:25:13.480 thirty years ago. You know, I always get asked, why 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:17.680 do we see all these uh hemorrhagic viruses and these 0:25:17.880 --> 0:25:22.959 uh you know, new coronaviruses, and so it's like people. 0:25:23.240 --> 0:25:30.800 The pollinators of the rainforests are bats, gentle nocturnal fruit bats, 0:25:30.840 --> 0:25:35.480 and their niche in our global ecology is being destroyed. 0:25:36.320 --> 0:25:39.720 They are starving, they are flying in flocks in search 0:25:39.880 --> 0:25:44.679 of the fruit that they are particular species is adapted to, 0:25:45.720 --> 0:25:48.200 and when they can't find it, they're getting closer to 0:25:48.320 --> 0:25:54.240 human orchards and human activities, even though very few bat 0:25:54.359 --> 0:25:57.240 species in the world want to be anywhere near a 0:25:57.359 --> 0:26:01.840 human being. They are very shy animals. You know. We 0:26:01.960 --> 0:26:09.000 have disrupted that ecological niche so completely that there's thousands 0:26:09.160 --> 0:26:13.560 of bat born diseases that one way or another we're 0:26:13.600 --> 0:26:17.359 probably going to get exposed to over the next few decades. 0:26:17.760 --> 0:26:23.640 It's not just people who are exposed. Race horses stabled 0:26:23.640 --> 0:26:28.080 in Hendra, an outer suburb of Brisbane, Australia, began falling 0:26:28.160 --> 0:26:32.359 ill and dying rapidly. The disease spread to seven people, 0:26:32.960 --> 0:26:37.240 killing most of them. Scientists identified the cause and named 0:26:37.240 --> 0:26:42.159 it hendra virus. After much searching, they found hendrovirus is 0:26:42.280 --> 0:26:46.320 natural source or reservoir. It was a type of large 0:26:46.400 --> 0:26:50.399 fruit bat known as a flying fox. Turns out he 0:26:50.520 --> 0:26:54.080 was an important finding. The discovery of hendra virus in 0:26:54.160 --> 0:26:58.520 bats prompted scientists to study how these ancient flying mammals 0:26:58.920 --> 0:27:04.240