Given the engineered collapse of USAID and the NIH in the USA, as well as their turning away from WHO support, what are the most likely future scenarios? Can the other developed nations mount a credible pandemic response without the resources of the USA?
I am especially interested in global perspectives because pathogens don’t need passports. How might this impact the global order?
My magic eightball says, “Signs point to yes” - we’re in a global state where every winter there are pretty significant health risks to flying and outbreaks… if you don’t know someone with long COVID then you’re extremely lucky, it’s really degenerative in some people I love.
The difference is that if something like those first two COVID winters happened again it’s unlikely we’d see any sort of mass order (and government mandate to allow remote work) in America like we saw before. But up here in Vancouver most jobs that can be done remotely have now shifted to that and people avoid going to crowded places when an outbreak is happening. You’ll often just see Skytrain extremely vacant if people have heard a flu is going around.
Countries outside the US have invested independently in better staffed research teams to fight annual outbreaks and sane countries have rolling mailing lists (I got an invitation two weeks ago for my next free shot!) about when to top up your flu/covid/rsv vaccine. If the US wants to be a breeding ground for outbreaks we can’t stop them, but we’re trying to insulate Canada as well as possible and working with the EU to do so.
I despair of any insulation of Canada. Too much daily ground traffic across that huge unguarded border. Cancelling flights won’t make much difference there. North America is one giant petri dish sharing disease like a family full of young children.
But I am glad the other nations have begun to strengthen their systems too. Humanity will survive in some form, pandemics can’t wipe us all out.