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Asked by EdnahO on 10 Jan 2022.
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Jonny Coates answered on 10 Jan 2022:
This is a good question and I’m sure there are better people here to answer this than me. I think it is possible that this will be our biggest threat this decade (in terms of diseases) but we are seeing more dangerous diseases with increased frequency. This is a result of lots of different (global) factors and has the potential to get worse. So the honest answer is I really hope this is the biggest disease threat this decade but there are no guarantees. Very interested to see what other people think on this one.
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Prabs Dehal answered on 11 Jan 2022:
Maybe? People are becoming more aware that diseases that affect animals and can mutate to also affect humans (called zoonosis) do occur much more commonly than was thought to be the case.
Climate change is likely to make the spread of some diseases such as West Nile fever (also a virus, but spread by mosquitos) more common.
However, the coronavirus pandemic has shown the world how serious this is and hopefully, this means governments around the world are more alert to developing vaccines and public health measures to cope. -
Danielle Nader answered on 11 Jan 2022:
Great question!
I think maybe, leaning towards yes. Viruses are the most transmissible of the microbes. Bacteria and fungi are very dangerous and cause more severe diseases, but respiratory viruses travel the fastest because it is easily passed between people via cough, saliva etc. We saw other pandemics in the last few decades, if you’ve heard of Ebola, Zika, MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV. These all happened between 2003-2016. So I think there will definitely be new viruses that pop up, but hopefully we have learned a lot from this pandemic so the next one does not spread as quickly or cause as many cases/deaths.
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Melanie Krause answered on 11 Jan 2022:
Hi again Ednah,
That’s another good question!
I would say in terms of infectious diseases that is probably the case.. it’s not uncommon that big virus outbreaks happen, but often they are restricted to parts of the world (like the Ebola outbreak in 2015). What makes this one ‘special’ is that it really reached all corners of the world.. that doesn’t happen very often and I think it won’t happen again this decade.However, outbreaks like this one will probably be more likely in the future. We travel a lot more so viruses can spread better.. and humans destroy rain forests and other habitats of animals (such as bats), also we keep a lot of animals in small places for farming. SARS-CoV-1 for example came from minks in a fur farm.
On top of that climate change is of course a big issue.. we will probably see more people die from strokes or hunger because its too dry to grow crops. And if it gets warmer insects that spread diseases in warm places can move around to different parts of the world. I think in longer terms that is also what we really need to be worried about.
Sorry to give such a depressing answer 😉
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Christopher Richardson answered on 13 Jan 2022:
Great question. No I think we will see more threats BUT it depends on what you and the world think a threat is!
Covid being a virus infects a very high number of people all over the world, super fast but doesn’t kill a lot of those people. In fact it is usually other health issues that end up being the cause of death when you have covid. So we would say that the mortality rate of covid is lower and so a smaller threat than other viruses around the world like Ebola.
Ebola infects people but not as easily and no way near as many as it requires close contact of people for longer but it kills around 50% of everyone it infects making the mortality rate of Ebola very high and also the threat very high. Luckily with it being slower to infect we can control it better than covid meaning overall less people die worldwide.So a disease being a threat depends on how it spreads, the mortality rate and how good the population and the healthcare can deal with the threat early on! Unfortunately in poorer countries in the world this is sometimes not the case.
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