‘Panic and neglect’: Scientific improvements help fight pandemics such as coronavirus, but funding lags between emergencies
March 31, 2020 / Bart Jansen, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – One virus came from an unusual kind of cat and killed hundreds of people. Another was blamed on pigs and killed 18,000 people worldwide, two-thirds of them in the USA. A third came from camels, killed hundreds and remains more lethal than the others.
Each of these respiratory viruses, which sparked worldwide panics during the past 20 years, offer lessons in how to battle the new coronavirus that has sickened more than 800,000 people around the world.
Public health agencies in the USA are hampered in putting those lessons into action because theyhaven’t spent enough time and money preparing between crises. Public healthfunding at every level of government has spiked feverishly during outbreaks, only to stagnate or fall after the outbreak dissipated.
“Every time we have an infectious disease emergency, you see a lot of interest in funding and robust response, and then that disappears when these events recede from the headlines. We have this cycle of panic and neglect, panic and neglect,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security.
