Although it cannot be seen from this distance, the next pandemic is coming down a national highway near you.
It’s just a matter of time until it arrives….
This is not mere alarmist rhetoric: It is a simple fact based on historical, scientific data.
And if epidemics are thrown into the mix, then the outlook becomes grimmer.
Pandemics cover a wide region, while epidemics are smaller and more localized. Pandemics and epidemics can be caused either by viruses or by bacteria.
Covid-19 is an example of a pandemic.
Epidemics include Ebola, in West Africa; Dengue fever, in subtropical regions worldwide, especially in the Philippines; the Zika virus, in the Americas; and MERS, in the Middle East.
In fact, it is fair to say that one of the Philippines’ best-known revolutionary leaders, Apolinario Mabini – whose face adorns the obverse side of the ten-peso coin – was afflicted by both a pandemic and an epidemic.
Mabini, the “Brains of the Revolution”, contracted polio in 1895, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Polio was subsequently classified as a pandemic. Later, after drinking contaminated carabao milk, Mabini died of cholera, an epidemic, in 1903.
Covid-19 arrived in Catanduanes on April 19, 2020, and to date, the disease has killed at least 2,768 people in the Bicol Region, according to a Facebook page published by the Bicol Center for Health Development. Data for just Catanduanes were unavailable.
So far worldwide, Covid-19 has killed at least 7 million people, but some experts think that this is an underestimate and that the true figure could be twice that.
In any case, Covid-19 is mere child’s play compared to the carnage of previous pandemics.
Smallpox, for example, killed 500 million Europeans between 1400 and 1800, a period when the world population was less than 1 billion. It is 8 billion today.
And the same virus killed another 300 million people in the 20th century before it was completely eliminated with vaccines in the late 1970s.
The worst pandemic ever was the Black Death, which was caused by a bacterium and killed up to 200 million Europeans in just a few years, from 1347-1351.
Also known as the Bubonic Plague, it is considered the deadliest pandemic ever due to its high mortality rate and short duration.
Other noteworthy pandemics from recent times include the Asian Flu of 1957-1958, which killed 1-2 million people; the Hong Kong flu of 1968-1969, which killed 1 million people; HIV/AIDS, which has killed 42.3 million people since 1981.
Based on a statistical analysis of historical data, scientists say that there is at least a 38 percent chance of another pandemic occurring in any given lifetime, but this is likely an underestimate.
In the study, scientists analyzed data from 476 epidemics from the 1600s to the present day. They concluded that the 38 percent figure could double in coming decades due to climate change.
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a benchmark organization of scientific excellence.
Climate change increases the probability of emergence of infectious diseases because, as temperatures warm, disease-carrying insects like mosquitoes, fleas and ticks migrate and increasingly spread vector-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria.
And melting permafrost in arctic regions is expected to release ancient pathogens that will pose additional health risks. Anthrax already has emerged from permafrost and killed thousands of reindeer in the Yamalo-Nenets region of Siberia.
Human population density and global travel also increase the opportunities for viruses to spread unchecked. Global travel has increased from 1.1 billion arrivals in 2013 to about 1.4 billion today.
Also, due to urbanization and population growth, population density has increased from 49 people per square kilometer in 2013 to 55 people in 2024.
Population pressure on natural environments also causes “zoonotic spillovers” – the spread of viruses from animals like bats and civets to human beings.
So, from almost every angle, the probabilities of another pandemic are all pointing in the wrong direction.
Bryce McIntyre, PhD, resides in San Andres. He holds a doctoral degree from Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA