Pandemics and ABRs cause extinction – the risk is higher than ever

Pandemics should instead be understood as falling between a natural and an anthropogenic risk. Non-engineered pathogens that emerge from nature do not represent the same type of direct natural risk as an event such as an asteroid strike. Understanding a pandemic in terms of a global catastrophic risk is more practical, meaning that it could threaten permanent civilizational collapse (Bostrom and Ćirković 2011). The John Hopkins Center for Health Security has followed this idea in defining pandemics as possible “Global Catastrophic Biological Risks” (GCBRs). Which they define as biological events—deliberate, accidental, or emerging—that could lead to sudden, extraordinary, widespread disaster beyond the collective capability of national and international governments and the private sector to control [that] if unchecked […] would lead to great suffering, loss of life, and sustained damage to national governments, international relationships, economies, societal stability, or global security. (Schoch-Spana et al. 2017, 323)

Though humanity has lived with diseases since its earliest history, the contemporary possibility of such a risk has increased. The global population recently climbed to over 8 billion, and the overall population density continues to increase (Roser et al. 2013). With more individuals, there are more possible origins of new pandemic diseases. As of 2018, 55% of the world’s population lived in urban areas (UN DESA 2018), and an estimated 65% by 2050 (UN DESA 2019). People living closer to one another will likely increase the transmission rates.

Many facets of modern life further increase a pandemic’s possible severity, scope, and scale (Jones et al. 2008; Morse 1995). Deforestation, industrial farming, and meat production practices combined with climate change increase the likelihood of zoonotic transmission of pathogens from animals to humans. The melting permafrost, increased ultraviolet immunosuppression, changing weather patterns, and arctic thawing that comes with global warming may unleash pathogens frozen long ago (Hofmeister et al. 2021). Alternatively, trigger pathogenic mutations in previously non-pathogenic organisms. The ease of global transportation also dramatically increases the risk of future pandemics (Ord 2020). In addition to these variables, war is a significant factor that results in the spread of pandemic disease, both unintentionally as troops move into foreign lands and intentionally and potentially when used as a weapon (A. T. Price-Smith 2009).

Another often singled but under-recognized future pandemic risk is so-called super bugs, antimicrobial resistant bacteria. Superbugs fall into three categories defined by their susceptibility to antimicrobial agents. Multidrug-resistant pathogens are not susceptible to at least one agent in three or more categories, extensively drug-resistant are not susceptible to at least one agent in all but two or fewer categories, and the most concerning the pandrug-resistant which have no known susceptibility to any antimicrobial agents (Magiorakos et al. 2012).

The potential risk from superbugs is grave. The general director of the WHO described it as being a “fundamental threat to human health, development and security” (Fox 2016). In the USA alone, in 2019 the rate of superbug infections was 2.8 million each year with more than 35,000 deaths (CDC 2019). This rate has likely risen by 15% between 2019 and 2020 (Mishra 2022). Globally the situation is worse. In 2019 an estimated 1.27 million deaths were directly tied to these superbugs, with another 4.95 million associated with such infections. The global burden of these infections is likely higher than HIV or Malaria. Like many other pandemic-related topics, the global burden of these diseases unequally spread with much higher concentrations in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators 2022).

Biomedical researcher Dr. Brian K. Coombes described the severity of the situation, “antibiotics are the foundation on which all modern medicine rests. Cancer chemotherapy, organ transplants, surgeries, and childbirth all rely on antibiotics to prevent infections. If you can’t treat those, then we lose the medical advances we have made in the last 50 years” (Miller 2015).