Group of people cleaning together in public park,
With the new US administration taking over, we are reminded of how the Coronavirus pandemic played a significant role in both the fall and the comeback of the Trump administration. What is widely considered a misguided executive order to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization stems from Trump’s wounds from that tumultuous period in recent history. Human ambivalence about the threat of viruses continues to polarize our politics, and so it may be instructive to consider what some areas of consensus might be to be found in the science of viral research. Moreover, the need to understand viruses and their transmission is likely to have profound implications for a wide range of other policies on transport, immigration and trade. So let’s consider some common sense approaches to virus research for a more sustainable future.
Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg famously said that “the single greatest threat to the continued dominance of man on the planet is the virus.” Biological entities called viruses exist in the twilight zone between life and non-life and remain an elusive topic of evolutionary study. While the invisible biotic world of microbiology is often synonymous with fear, only about 1% of all microbes can cause disease in humans. Within the realm of microbes, bacteria, unlike viruses, have found redemption in our contemporary worldview through their positive role in digestive processes. Viruses have received less attention for their constructive role in ecological sustainability, but their virtue should not be completely eclipsed by their vice.
If we consider just viruses (excluding other pathogenic agents such as bacteria), there are about 220 known types of viruses that are known to cause disease in humans. However, there are about 320,000 types of viruses in mammals alone (based on statistical extrapolations). An estimate published in 2013 suggested that it would cost ~$6.3 billion to detect these viruses (or ~$1.4 billion for 85% of the total diversity). Currently, there is a fairly well-funded organization called the Global Virome Project that has been undertaking such an inventory since 2018. However, it will take several more years before this project shows clear preventive results against pandemics.
There are also critics of such virus inventory work, who feel the funds would be better spent on surveillance of disease clusters and better coordination on global hospital reporting standards. Such an approach may also be a safeguard against wider population exposure to pathogens from laboratory accidents that may arise from inventory research. Clearly, given the staggering economic cost of the current pandemic, investing in inventory and surveillance approaches would be justifiable and far less expensive than the trillions of dollars in bailouts that were being implemented during just a few months of this crisis. Moreover, even if surveillance is a more urgent mechanism against the spread of pandemics, viral inventories may also have a side benefit of detecting some virulent viruses in the process that help us with nanotechnology research.
Our aim should be to ensure, as best we can, that no virus or pathogen is “new” in an age when we have so many analytical tools at our disposal. Developing such a knowledge base would be an essential step to then define our path of sustainable coexistence with the biotic diversity on our planet. Greater coordination between major environmental research projects and public health research entities deserves immediate attention. The next step could be more specific project coordination and data collection with organizations such as the Global Environment Facility and its implementing agencies serving in particular the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the Framework Convention of the UN on Climate Change. There is good evidence for systemic links between biodiversity, land degradation and climate change, which in turn can be threat multipliers for pandemic vulnerability.
Finally, while current environmental indicators may appear to be improving in some areas as a result of low human activity patterns in the pandemic, there is no room to be honest. Recovering from such disruptions means finding an optimal path between caution and paranoia. We will need to find viable options for lifestyles with lower ecological impacts, while still mitigating the health risks that can drive survivalist selfishness. For example, a return to the use of low-carbon public transport with greater care for hygiene, without affecting the risks of future contagions. Ultimately, in the post-COVID19 era, global health governance mechanisms such as the WHO will need to be more closely associated with individual responsibility if we are to have an ecologically and economically efficient path forward to sustainable development.