Pandemic Timeline

Prediction

George magazine features Bill Gates and mentions a lung-attacking virus.

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So we hope you enjoy George’s take on the future. Why not put it in a safe place somewhere and take it out in 20 years? — John F. Kennedy Jr.

In the section, “Disease: Killer Cooties by Arno Karlen, predictions for 2020:

Some people have built careers hawking the worst-case scenario: an overpopulated planet being choked to death by lung-attacking Andromeda* viruses, for example. It’s true that frightening global epidemics could arise from a new retrovirus, a killer flu, or an Ebola-type pathogen running out of control. Because our technology and our behavior have sped up microbial evolution, reducing the threat of new plagues will demand thoughtful efforts—slowing population growth, keeping our food and water clean, and setting up global systems to monitor infectious diseases and microbial drug resistance, for instance. Human extinction, however, is unlikely, not least because the human immune system is a marvel of resourcefulness. Infection is a universal fact of nature, and microbes share the environment with us. For some microbes, we are the environment! The greatest threat may not be microbes but our failure to protect ourselves.

Arno Karlen is the author of Man and Microbes (Touchstone)

— George, February 1997, p. 75 of original edition, p. 16 of abridged PDF linked here

* “Andromeda” is a reference to the book The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton.

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