[Commentary] The Final Pandemic

Perhaps I'm just feeling overly idealistic due to the past year, but I would be perfectly content for COVID-19 to be the final pandemic. What if we never had to go through this again? What if we had a health system that could prevent outbreaks from spreading worldwide?

I think we can do it. In particular I was inspired by this New York Times article about a campaign to pre-emptively create vaccines for the twenty top viral threats. I think it is imperative that the program is funded so that we have enough resources to meet the moment. Combined with AlphaFold, we will be able to come up with protein folds and whatever else we need for antibody synthesis.

Genetic viral sequencing is something that we have already been doing, and something that becomes increasingly more effective as coverage increases. What we do need is some non-partisan global location for health officials to track viruses. One does exist already, viruSITE, and I hope that it will be able to scale not just for novel viruses but to be able to track outbreaks and mutations as they happen based on location.

I don't know what virus will break next. The Nipah virus is one potential candidate. Similar to the coronavirus, it seems to come from bats and has spread to pigs and humans. Outbreaks have already occurred in Southeast Asia including Malaysia and Kerala. The recent outbreak in Kerala was handled very well, thanks to the work of health officials. It shows we already have a lot of the necessary processes and technology in place. Now we just need to ensure it scales.