THE NEXT PANDEMIC IS COMING

Going back to the Black Death in the mid 1300s, humanity has suffered through a bunch of pandemics.

What is the Black Death?

• A bubonic plague pandemic from 1346 to 1353 killed as many as 50 million people, perhaps half the population of Europe.
• Rats to fleas to the bacterium Yersinia pestis.  Once affected, this bacterium could also be spread through the air.
• After 7000 years, there is no consensus of the origin.
• The most likely first source though was probably Central Asia, more specifically, China over 2600 years ago.

• 
  There is no direct link yet established, but could a bat have infected a flea to initiate this pandemic?
• The deadliest recent outbreak struck Madagascar in 2017, killing 170.

There are some pandemics that are still here.  For example, malaria has been around throughout history, and this malady had killed perhaps 50-60 BILLION people, about half of humans that have ever lived.

• COVID-19 has so far killed 7 million, or an average of 1.4 million/year.

• 
  The World Health Organization has just approved either the RT,S/ASO1 malaria vaccine.  
• However, it is only 30% efficient.  So development needs to yet improve.
• It took so long because vaccine development focuses on viruses and bacteria.  A parasite (
  Plasmodium
  ,
   right) is responsible for malaria infection
• There is no availability of this vaccine in the U.S. because there are so few cases.  There are 2000/cases/year in the U.S., but these came from travel.  Once you get it, you can be treated.
• Malaria itself is not contagious.
• There were 263 million malaria cases in 2023, with 597,000 deaths in 83 countries, 94% in Africa.  There were 600,000 or so deaths in 2022.
• Around 90% of COVID-19 deaths were 65 or older.  76% of malaria deaths were children under the age of 5.
• 
  Of course, everyone knows that female Anopheles mosquitos are the cause of malaria.  However, there is evidence that mosquitos got the parasite belonging to the genus Plasmodium from BATS!

• 
  Bats seem to almost always be the original carrier of the virus that causes a pandemic.  There was a sense that only those pandemics originating in Asia were bat-caused.  However, there is substantial evidence that Ebola and Marburg, found in Africa, came from bats that were endemic, that is, don't blame Asia for everything.

Bats are amazing:

• First appeared roughly 52.5 million years ago, not long after the demise of the dinosaurs.
• Of the 6400 mammalian species, bats are the only ones that can fly.
• There are 1300 species in 20 families, making up approximately 20% of all mammal species in the world.

• 
  Rats too are amazing  2,300 species in 33 families, making up 40% of all mammals.
• Rodents harbor more viruses as a group, but bats harbor more viruses per species.
• Bats live longer than other animals with similar body weight.
• Rest heart rate of 200-400 beats per minute, increasing to 1100 in flight.
• There are migratory bats that travel up to 1240 miles.
• Bats rarely develop cancer.
• They have more genes responsible for repairing DNA damage than other mammals.
• They have an immune system that more effectively kills or tolerates invaders.
• 
  This latter characteristic allows bats to spread diseases.
• Bats not only eat insects, they pollinate more than 500 species of plants, including dates and bananas.
• In some societies, bats are hunted as food, as for example, Palau bat soup (right).

From Scientific American:

THE NEXT VIRAL PLAGUE IS COMING:  How We Can Stop It.  By Jane Qiu.

Not sure if you can access this article, so I'll summarize.

• 
  The article is mostly about what bioscientists need to do to research this field.  They probe bat droppings.  As this occurs where bats live, they too get pooped on, where the bacteria live.  Actually, professors generally get their students to do this.  Here are two examples, Christie Jones and Olivia Milloway from Emory University.

• 
  Viruses carried by the world’s only flying mammals, bats, have infected people. In the past decades a series of viral attackers—many of them deadly—have been found in or linked to bats: Marburg, Ebola, Hendra, Nipah, SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV and, most recently, SARS-CoV-2. COVID.
• But why bats? And why now? After decades of searching for clues and putting together puzzle pieces involving evolution, ecology and climate, scientists have come up with a good answer. Bats have evolved a unique immune system that lets them coexist with a horde of otherwise harmful viruses, a development that seems tied, in surprising ways, to their ability to fly. But when people destroy their habitats and food and trigger disturbing changes in climate—all of which have coincided recently—bats’ immune systems can be strained to the breaking point. The animals can no longer keep viruses in check. Their burgeoning population of microbes rains down on other animals and eventually infects people.
  

The probability of a COVID-19-severe pandemic is about 2%/year, meaning that if you were born in 2000, you would have had a 38% chance of experiencing one.  7 million, fewer than 0.1% of the world population died from this pandemic.   The Spanish Flu, a century ago, killed around 50 million, or 2.8% of the human population.  Another pandemic of that type happens only every 400 years.  Yet, another one of some type will be coming, made more possible by something like biological warfare, or an Andromeda Strain.

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