Yet more evidence of warnings about pandemic danger

(Acknowledgements to JSTOR Daily)

In September of last year, that is, a couple of months before even the authorities in Wuhan realised there was a novel pathogen on the loose in their city, this report appeared. Entitled "Preparedness for a High-Impact Respiratory Pathogen Pandemic", it had been drawn up by a team at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University at the behest of that centre's monitoring board. The authors were careful to distance themselves from their commissioners and from the people they consulted, but the latter had international standing and the team of authors was high-powered. The gist of the report was:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report examines the current state of preparedness for pandemics caused by “high-impact respiratory pathogens” — that is, pathogens with the potential for widespread transmission and high observed mortality. Were a high-impact respiratory pathogen to emerge, either naturally or as the result of accidental or deliberate release, it would likely have significant public health, economic, social, and political consequences. Novel high-impact respiratory pathogens have a combination of qualities that contribute to their potential to initiate a pandemic. The combined possibilities of short incubation periods and asymptomatic spread can result in very small windows for interrupting transmission, making such an outbreak difficult to contain. The potential for high-impact respiratory pathogens to affect many countries at once will likely require international approaches different from those that have typically occurred in geographically limited events, such as the ongoing Ebola crisis in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Numerous high-level reviews have been commissioned in recent years to take stock of global preparedness for infectious disease outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics. These reviews have assessed current preparedness structures and capabilities, have identified existing gaps, and have proposed recommendations for strengthening outbreak prevention, detection, and response. But preparedness for a high-impact respiratory pathogen pandemic has received little specific focus in these high-level reviews. While there has been some focus on improving international and national capacities for pandemic influenza, specifically after the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, there have been few (if any) high-level reviews or recommendations focusing on the possibility of other high-impact respiratory pathogens with pandemic potential. The lack of global attention on and consideration of this threat speaks to the urgency of addressing preparedness for epidemics and pandemics that might be caused by high-impact respiratory pathogens. While there is overlap between the systems and capabilities required to respond to any disease outbreak, a high-impact respiratory pathogen poses serious additional challenges that deserve special consideration.

The authors of the report even foresaw the threat posed by asymptomatic spread, though even they might well have been surprised by the long incubation period of Covid-19. They recommended many improvements to public health regimes and warned what would occur if those steps were not taken. (As we have seen in England and Wales, those predictions have also come true.) 

There is one frightening warning which has not yet been put to the test and must give pause for thought to those developing vaccines:
Many respiratory viruses possess RNA (as opposed to DNA) genomes [as Covid-19 does], which may also confer special status on this group in terms of pandemic potential. An RNA genome is often characterized by high degrees of mutability, some of which may confer vaccine escape, antiviral resistance, heightened viral shedding, or increased pathogenicity.

The whole report is worth reading.

For those readers who subscribe to the theory that Red China secretly weaponised Covid-19, I would point out that the Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is an internationally-respected leader in the field of zoonoses.  Not only do they collaborate with Western laboratories, they also publish in the West. This paper, from 2015, is particularly relevant. It may well have set the ball rolling at Johns Hopkins.