Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity
Humanity is facing a bizarre new pandemic threat, scientists have warned. Ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could one day be released by Earth’s warming climate and unleash a major disease outbreak, they say.
Strains of these Methuselah microbes – or zombie viruses as they are also known – have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered – not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past.
As a result, scientists have begun planning an Arctic monitoring network that would pinpoint early cases of a disease caused by ancient micro-organisms. Additionally, it would provide quarantine and expert medical treatment for infected people in a bid to contain an outbreak, and prevent infected people from leaving the region.
Well that’s the thing, bird flu was handled competently, so it’s spread was mostly contained and people barely remember it now.
It was also significantly less infectious than the Spanish flu or COVID. With R∅ numbers of H1N1(2009) of 1.46 to 1.48, Spanish Flu of 1.47 to 2.27 and COVID of 1.5 to 3.5
I am not saying that H1N1 didn’t meet the definition of a pandemic. But it didn’t take the extra ordinary measures to contain that COVID or the Spanish flu took.