Inadequate public health laws result in existential future pandemics.
Siegfried 23 [Tom, he was editor in chief of Science News from 2007 to 2012, his awards include the American Geophysical Union's Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism, the Science-in Society award from the National Association of Science Writers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science-Westinghouse Award, the American Chemical Society’s James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public, and the American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award, “Here are the Top 10 threats to the survival of civilization” 4 April 2023, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/threats-civilization-survival-humanity-apocalypse, Science News. Accessed 23 July 2023]//jstumpff
You would think that a pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans and many millions more people worldwide would launch a serious effort to guard against future pandemics. Instead, the pandemic has led not to strengthening of public health measures, but an official response telling everybody they’re on their own.
Institutions charged with protecting public health now say individuals should weigh their own risks, but do not provide the necessary information to weigh those risks, and ignore the fact that the vast majority of people do not possess the expertise needed to weigh risks intelligently anyway. Making pandemic mitigations a personal choice is very much like saying people should decide for themselves whether to obey stop signs or run red lights. Consequently, a future pandemic as infectious as COVID-19, but with a much higher fatality rate, could kill enough people to shred the social fabric.
This danger has long been foreseen, but mostly ignored. In 1988, molecular biologist and Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg lamented complacency about the threat of global epidemics, and warned that viruses and other microbes are formidable foes in a never-ending competition for planetary domination. “In that natural evolutionary competition,” Lederberg wrote, “there is no guarantee that we will find ourselves the survivor.”