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My Prediction: We’re due for another global health emergency
Kamran Khan is the founder and CEO of BlueDot.
In the last two decades, the world has experienced an alarming number of destructive outbreaks: SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika and, of course, COVID-19. And although COVID is here to stay, it won’t always cause the level of disruption we’ve experienced to this point. Still, if the recent past is a predictor of the future, we’re due for another major outbreak in 2023 or 2024, one that could cause substantial disruption—to travel, social interaction, the economy and our very way of life. If we look at the last 13 years alone, we’ve had seven global public health emergencies, as defined by the World Health Organization. This cadence, of one event every two years, has been fairly consistent, but it appears to be accelerating.
More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, which are perfect places for viruses to spread. At the same time, we have never been more mobile. Billions of people travel around the planet every year. Humans have inadvertently become vectors for dangerous microbes, and it’s happening at unprecedented speed. These new diseases are primarily zoonotic, meaning that they originate in animals. They transfer to humans because we mass-consume other creatures and disrupt ecosystems. You may remember that a market in Wuhan, China, was ground zero for the COVID pandemic. Another example is the Nipah virus, a bat-borne disease that was first documented in domesticated pigs. Numerous Nipah outbreaks have occurred in humans around Asia in the last few years.
I’m an infectious disease physician. I also run a company called BlueDot that tracks and forecasts outbreaks using analytics. According to our data, Canadians are the third-most internationally mobile population on Earth in terms of air travel per capita. Canada defines itself as a diverse microcosm of the world. That’s a huge strength, but it also means that we’re hyperconnected to global health risks...
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The Year Ahead: Our Guide to 2023
Read expert predictions on what’s to come in 2023 in health-care, food, entertainment, housing and more!
Also in this issue:
- A revealing interview with Supreme Court Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin
- A new kind of solar panel that just might change the world and the Canadian teen who invented it
- Inside the A-Frame cabin of your dreams
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