The Next Pandemic?

Laurie Garrett

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005

Summary:  Since it first emerged in 1997, avian influenza has become deadlier and more resilient. It has infected 109 people and killed 59 of them. If the virus becomes capable of human-to-human transmission and retains its extraordinary potency, humanity could face a pandemic unlike any ever witnessed.

Laurie Garrett is Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations and is the author of The Coming Plague and Betrayal of Trust.

In the event of a modern pandemic, the U.S. Department of Defense, with the lessons of World War I in mind, would undoubtedly insist that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan be given top access to vaccines and antiflu drugs. About 170,000 U.S. forces are currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, while 200,000 more are permanently based elsewhere overseas. All of them would potentially be in danger: in late March, for example, North Korea conceded it was suffering a large-scale H7N1 outbreak -- taking place within miles of some 41,000 U.S. military forces. It is impossible to predict how such a pandemic influenza would affect U.S. operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, or any other place.

Armed forces throughout the world would face similar issues. Most would no doubt pressure their governments for preferential access to vaccine and medications. In addition, more than a quarter of some African armies and police forces are HIV positive, perhaps making them especially vulnerable to influenza's lethal impact. Social instability resulting from troop and police losses there would likely be particularly acute.

Such a devastating disease would clearly have profound implications for international relations and the global economy. With death tolls rising, vaccines and drugs in short supply, and the potential for the virus to spread further, governments would feel obliged to take drastic measures that could inhibit travel, limit worldwide trade, and alienate their neighbors. In fact, the Z+ virus has already demonstrated its disruptive potential on a limited scale. In July 2004, for example, when the Z+ strain reemerged in Vietnam after a three-month hiatus, officials in the northern province of Bac Giang charged that Chinese smugglers were selling old and sickly birds in Vietnamese markets -- where more than ten tons of chickens are smuggled daily. Chinese authorities in charge of policing their side of the porous border, more than 1,000 kilometers long, countered that it was impossible to inspect all the shipments. Such conflicts are now limited to the movement of livestock, but if a pandemic develops they could well escalate to a ban on trade and human movement.

Although there is little evidence that isolation measures have ever slowed the spread of influenza -- it is just too contagious -- most governments would likely resort to quarantines in a pandemic crisis. Indeed, on April 1, 2005, President George W. Bush issued an executive order authorizing the use of quarantines inside the United States and permitting the isolation of international visitors suspected of carrying influenza. If one country implements such orders, others will follow suit, bringing legal international travel to a standstill. The SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus, which was less dangerous than a pandemic flu by several orders of magnitude, virtually shut down Asian travel for three months.

As great as they would be, the economic consequences of travel restrictions, quarantines, and medical care would be well outstripped by productivity losses. In a typical flu season, productivity costs are ten times greater than all other flu-related costs combined. The decline in productivity is usually due directly to worker illness and absenteeism. During a pandemic, productivity losses would be even more disproportionate because entire workplaces -- schools, theaters, and public facilities -- would be shut down to limit human-to-human spread of the virus. Workers' illnesses also would likely be even more severe and last even longer than normal. Frankly, no models of social response to such a pandemic have managed to factor in fully the potential effect on human productivity. It is therefore impossible to reckon accurately the potential global economic impact.

AILING

The potential for a pandemic comes at a time when the world's public health systems are severely taxed and have long been in decline. This is true in both rich and poor countries.

The Bush administration recognized this weakness following the anthrax scare of 2001, which underscored the poor ability of federal and local health agencies to respond to bioterrorism or epidemic threats. Since that year, Congress has approved $3.7 billion to strengthen the nation's public health infrastructure. In 2003, the White House also took several steps to improve the nation's capacity to respond to a flu pandemic: it increased funding for the CDC's flu program by 242 percent, to $41.6 million in 2004; gave the National Institutes of Health an additional 320 percent in funds for flu-related research and development, for a total of $65.9 million; increased spending on the Food and Drug Administration's licensing capacity for flu vaccines and drugs by 173 percent, to $2.6 million; and spent an additional $80 million to create new stockpiles of Tamiflu and other anti-influenza drugs. On August 4, 2004, the Department of Health and Human Services also issued its pandemic flu plan, detailing further steps that would be taken by federal and state agencies in the event of a pandemic. Several other countries have released similar plans of action.

But despite all this, a recent event underscored the United States' tremendous vulnerability. In October 2004, the American College of Pathologists mailed a collection of mystery microbes prepared by a private lab to almost 5,000 labs in 18 countries for them to test as part their recertification. The mailing should have been routine procedure; instead, in March 2005 a Canadian lab discovered that the test kits included a sample of H2N2 flu -- a strain that had killed four million people worldwide in 1957. H2N2 has not been in circulation since 1968, meaning that hundreds of millions of people lack immunity to it. Had any of the samples leaked or been exposed to the environment, the results could have been devastating. On learning of the error, the WHO called for the immediate destruction of all the test kits. Miraculously, none of the virus managed to escape any of the labs.