« La pandémie qui vient ? » – “Is the next pandemic closer than we think?”

Translated from Sciences Humaine

While a particularly deadly new strain of H7N9 flu has been discovered in China, several articles and books back the possibility of a major global epidemic.

 Are we on the verge of a pandemic more serious than the Spanish flu in the early twentieth century? In 1918-1919 , the H1N1 flu had killed 30 to 50 million people (some estimates range up to 100 million) and had infected 500 million people , or one third of the humanity of the time ( 1.7 billion people ) .

 In his impressive Contagion ( 2011) , filmmaker Steven Soderbergh envisioned a current global pandemic that would have the same mortality rate (2.5% compared with the normal rate of influenza which is usually less than 0.1%). The result was both scary - 300 million people, the virus that spread in hours around the globe by the globalized air transport - but also reveals major changes that the epidemiological world has known in this century: rapid detection of new forms of influenza, working together in laboratories worldwide, the ability to circulate information, to quickly create quarantine areas and very large-scale production of vaccines and treatments ...

 It is on these dangers  and changes that several books and articles give their support - the reality of which has been underscored by the rapid growth of a strain of H7N9 flu in China at the beginning of 2013. has been marked by rapid growth.  "The experts are analyzing the ability of the H7N9 to pass from birds to human viruses, and also its ability to infect birds without causing major symptoms , making it difficult to track its progress ," says Laurie Garrett in Foreign Policy . And she posed in the title of the article the logical question that follows these statements: " Influenza in China: The next big one ? " 


The model of SARS

 For some experts , the answer is rather not. Globalization plays in both directions - and not in the way of a global and uncontrollable spread of viruses . Today, more than 130 laboratories across 99 countries  every day control new viruses and share information needed to monitor global epidemiological spaces. When the SARS epidemic was declared in 2003 , Daniel Heymann said in an article in the New York Times (written for the 10th anniversary of the pandemic ), it only took a few hours for medical services and Administrato - health of the three places where the infection had been identified - Singapore , New York and Frankfurt - were all on full alert status . WHO , directed this time by Gro Harlem Brundtland, had quickly taken steps to monitor the SARS taking place in near real time ... and managed to convince the only country unwilling to open its medical information - China . The result: particularly lethal SARS virus will be active for only eight months , with a peak in April-May 2003 , and mortality will be relatively small: just over 7000 people have been infected. 774 will die.

This management model of a global major epidemic does not stop to consider possible future pandemics - and particularly the links between the new food practices, environmental degradation and the global spread of new virus strains . David Quammen , one of the best specialists in pandemics in Spillover notes that " environmental damage promote the emergence of new diseases." This is the set of social and environmental activities , which is now involved in the analysis of our epidemiological planet. It is past the time when pandemics were only seen as mere large-scale disease .