The Next Pandemic

May 3, 2009
By Kate Daily

How does it feel to be a pandemic? Fairly addictive, in fact. In the Flash-based Web game Pandemic 2, players take on the identity of a deadly disease trying to wipe out the earth's population. Using preset options, players create an illness designed for a maximum body count: will the disease be a virus, bacteria or a fungal pathogen? Will it be resistant to moisture? Cause coughing or sneezing? Be carried by rats or insects? If players make the symptoms too apparent, doctors will treat their disease before it spreads; too contagious and the airports close down before it can jump to other countries.

It's an engrossing game, and an eerie one in light of the rapid global spread of the swine flu. But though this particular flu is causing a certain level of hysteria, public-health doctors appear to be cautiously optimistic that Americans have the training, resources and advance warning needed to keep the virus under control. Still, both the real pandemic and the virtual versions in the game reflect important questions: what will the next global health crisis look like—and what can we do to stop it?

The potential epidemics that most worry epidemiologists and public-health experts fall into three main categories: diseases formerly found in animals that have mutated to cause human infection (mad-cow disease, avian flu) diseases spread beyond their country of origin thanks to globalization (West Nile virus, SARS) and diseases resistant to existing medication (MRSA, tuberculosis). It's tempting to write off these fears as public-health hand-wringing. But is a potentially devastating pandemic really possible? "The answer is absolutely yes. There are something on the order of 1,500 microbes that infect humans. Over the last 15 years we've seen many … that were either new to the geographic range or new to humans," says Dr. David Weber, a doctor of infectious-disease medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's influenza working group.

© 2009 Newsweek, Inc.

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