Page 4 - The Next Pandemic: What's to Come?

CHAPTER ONE

People pay attention to authorities they respect. For exam-
ple, the American public trusts the National Weather Service
to forecast hazardous weather events. Some believe that a
similar system could forecast, and issue warnings about,
dangerous outbreaks of disease. According to Caitlin Riv-
ers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for
Health Security, this kind of system could speed America’s
response to the next pandemic. At a May 6, 2020, appear-
ance before a House committee on health spending, Rivers
described the benefi ts of such a system. An agency made
up of scientists, health professionals, and computer experts
could monitor signs of infectious disease across the nation.
It could recommend border closings or temporary lock-
downs before a deadly outbreak could spread. “We don’t
have anything like that for outbreaks, but this [COVID-19]
pandemic underscores why that must change,” she said.
“We should consider establishing a national center that
would perform academic forecasting and analytics.” 4

The Need for a Coordinated System
Most experts agree that the United States needs a coordi-
nated system to track outbreaks of infectious disease and
create models predicting how they might spread. The pieces
necessary for building a national warning system already ex-
ist. The problem is that they are scattered and do not work

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