Why we need a robust bio-surveillance defence network to warn of pandemics
The inability of established health intelligence networks to predict Covid-19 as an emerging pandemic until March 2020, weakens the credibility of the global biodefence programmes.
American poet Gertrude Stein said, "Everybody gets so much information all day long; that they lose their common sense."
Amidst the unrestrained conundrum of the blame game in the all-pervasive social media space, that the novel coronavirus was unleashed through genetic modification, it is reassuring to get a reality check from the US Intelligence Community (IC). The report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence USA released on April 30 has unambiguously stated the Covid-19 was neither genetically modified nor manmade. It is also interesting to note that the IC is still ascertaining, and has not ruled out an accident at the Wuhan lab in China. Earlier, WHO, based on its analysis and scientific data, had articulated that the Covid-19 pandemic had natural origins related to mutations in the SARS coronavirus with its resultant skipping species from bats to humans.
While abstaining from questioning the wisdom of the WHO, social-media mandarins and the gullible populace promptly propagated certain aspects which defy explanation. The prevailing conspirational paranoia is further aggravated by the realisation that this novel coronavirus fulfils most of the criteria which should trigger alarm systems of a suspected biological agent. Some of these are how a non-pathogen for humans till November 2019 was rendered highly virulent? The exponentially high transmission rates of Covid-19 with its varied morbidity and mortality seem unnerving in the backdrop of a disease presenting itself with myriad manifestations.
The resistance of this virus to known antiviral agents and vaccines adds fuel to the fire of speculation. The infodemic-generated conjectures conveniently concocted a genetically engineered strain of the virus which may have facilitated the launch of a biological agent. Coincidentally, Covid-19 is generously endowed with the ideal characteristics of a bioweapon which constitute high infectivity, increased virulence and non-availability of antivirals and vaccines. Causation of an unknown disease by a hitherto-fore-unknown pathogen, with lack of a proven epidemiological explanation, makes it even more quizzical.
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues its devastating effects globally, it may not be unreasonable to assume that the uncontrollable as a cascade due to the ‘accident’ at the virology laboratory in Wuhan may have resulted in the pandemic. The figment of imagination fuelled by conspiracy theorists in social, electronic and print media may not be entirely implausible, that China could have deliberately launched a biological attack to leverage its geostrategic great game in its long-standing aim to become the dominant superpower, while inundating its rivals’ economic potential, even if it may appear fictional. The social media behemoth, with the electronic and print media gravy train, generated infodemic as another intrusive Armageddon, blurring fact and fiction. The spectre of speculation and the space between conjectures and coincidences has fuelled a crescendo of conspiracies with their baggage of controversies. It is no small wonder then that WHO, in its report dated February 2, 2020, expressed concerns that the novel coronavirus is accompanied with an ‘infodemic’, about six weeks before it decided to declare it a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
When countries the world over are being inundated by this ravaging virus, how is it that China is reporting daily fresh infections in double digits only? Is the vice-like grip of the Chinese Communist Party so strong that the virus was virtually locked in and contained within a couple of months? The ‘Great Wall of China’ seems to have conveniently and consistently suppressed the entire information pathway from the beginning, since November-December 2019, including as most experts believe, the numbers of infected and dead. That this country with the largest population density and huge urban clusters in and around cities, especially Wuhan, seems to have come out seemingly unscathed, with less than 90,000 infected and 5,000 dead, is as yet without convincing scientific evidence. The difficulties emerge from China itself, with its perpetual, ‘opaque’ secrecy, unrestrained aims; and total disregard for not just its adversaries but perhaps the world too.
Nature by itself has nurtured life on our planet for eons. Of all the species on the planet, human beings have flagrantly caused the maximum grief and suffering to nature, even to the extent of rendering its ecosystems fragile and vulnerable. Is the Covid-19 pandemic a vengeful retaliation by nature to reclaim the Earth and teach a lesson to the gung-ho, self-propagating homo sapiens on a ‘high-octane tech overdrive’? Is it nature’s fury that more than a century after the Spanish Flu, which caused at least 50 million deaths worldwide, a relentlessly rampaging novel virus has wreaked unprecedented havoc across countries and continents?
This unrelenting viral pandemic will leave behind a world which will not be the same, at least for a really long time. Its colossal impact on humankind, perhaps comparable to World Wars, cannot just be attributed to the high infectivity of Covid-19 and its massive toll of death. In more ways than one, it has eroded and somewhat destroyed the cocooned invincibility of human beings.
Is it worthy of speculation that a virus which limited its natural habitat to bats for centuries, crosses the entire animal kingdom to selectively target and annihilate human beings? Can it simply be explained by the seemingly natural ‘drift and shift’ of the viral genome and its host swap? Is it merely a coincidence that the epicentre of the origins was at Wuhan in China; where an Institute of Virology is located? Does it seem intriguing that this biosafety level-4 lab at Wuhan, working on the SARS virus and this coronavirus in bats, had been red-flagged by scientists and observers in the past? Even if the virus took a gigantic leap across species, from its natural host in bats to overwhelm human beings, how did it choose Wuhan, where such bat species are not observed? The wet market in Wuhan seems quite like an intriguingly implicated red herring since bat meat is apparently not on their menu and the index case was unrelated to this market. The geographic colocation of the epicentre of the pandemic with the Virology Lab at Wuhan and the chronology of events, interspersed with denials and conflicting reports, seems to make this broth more sinister and conspirational.
The world's inability to learn from the SARS, H1N1 (swine flu) and MERS outbreaks, including this pandemic, all with origins in China, makes global preparedness for biothreats highly vulnerable. Covid-19 has exposed the underbelly of global biodefence preparedness to ascertain bioagents and emerging pandemics. What is however sad is that the entire world including the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) under the US Army Medical Research & Development Command, WHO, CDC, EU and other developed countries with established networks and infrastructure for health intelligence and bio-surveillance capabilities, did not forewarn initially; and later respond with alacrity, to this serious biothreat. Their inability to predict Covid-19 as an emerging pandemic till March 2020 weakens the credibility of the global biodefence programmes. It seems surreal that as late as in September 2018, the US President launched a seemingly comprehensive plan called the National Biodefense Strategy, elucidating the specifics to monitor defence against biothreats. Ironically, the USA is amongst the worst affected countries.
India, along with the world, needs to learn its lessons the hard way, to harmoniously synergise globally, with sustainable focused strategies and capabilities that promptly detect emerging biological threats and nascent pandemics, assess vulnerabilities and voids in preparedness, as also coordinate, implement and upscale comprehensive biodefence mechanisms. This will necessitate enhanced health intelligence initiatives with a major ramp-up of the bio-surveillance integration systems. Concerted efforts should be made to prioritise and align investments in biosecurity counter-measures to such biothreats and pandemics.
Now more than ever before, the world requires 21st century-worthy, early warning and detection systems with robust counter-measures, to create viable and agile global biosafety and public health response mechanisms to safeguard humankind. On a less serious note, an antidote should also be fast-tracked to control this burgeoning infodemic, which has captivated obsessive-compulsive mindsets in the social media spectrum.