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yehbru

Opinion: Covid-19 has revealed just how vulnerable we are to biosecurity threats - CNN - 0 views

  • The field of biosecurity -- aimed at keeping nations safe from natural or human-made pathogens -- has long been eclipsed by cybersecurity and counterterrorism
  • Covid-19, which is often compared to the flu pandemic of 1918, has been called a once-in-a-generation event. But the outbreak of MERS and SARS in recent years shows just how frequent emerging diseases can occur.
  • A significant increase in biological containment facilities over the last 30 years also poses a grave risk. There are now more than 50 facilities around the world that are categorized as "Level 4" labs, which contain the deadliest pathogens and require the highest level of safety, and thousands more are designated "Level 3" facilities that contain infectious agents or toxins that may cause potentially lethal infection. While it is highly unlikely that Covid-19 emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, the pandemic has raised the specter of a possible leak or act of bioterrorism. Containment facilities are an Achilles heel in biosecurity, and these labs, along with those who work there, should be subject to greater international scrutiny.
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  • We must not ignore the threat of bad actors gaining access to these dangerous pathogens, which are the ultimate terror weapons, due to their potentially massive impact
  • In Germany, security services interdicted vast amounts of the toxin ricin, which, authorities said, a couple was planning to use in a biological attack in 2018
  • Instead of looking to weaponize a highly virulent pathogen like anthrax -- the spore-forming bacterium which was infamously mailed out to media outlets and politicians in a bio attack in 2001, killing five people and injuring 17 more -- bad actors are now likely considering the efficacy of a less virulent but highly transmissible pathogen like SARS-CoV-2, which has brought the world to its knees in the last year. This pathogen has shown that transmissibility -- rather than toxicity -- is a major factor when it comes to mass disruption.
  • When it comes to policies that are already in place, there is the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC), a multilateral treaty that went into effect in 1975, which prohibits the development, production, acquisition and stockpiling of biological agents and toxins and any related delivery systems that have "no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes."
  • However, it is poorly funded in comparison to other treaties like the Chemical Weapons Convention, and does not have a corresponding body like the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to police it.
  • The World Health Organization could also implement an early warning system to predict pandemics, showing its progress around the globe.
  • MCMs are products such as vaccines, biologics and pharmaceutical drugs that can diagnose, protect or treat the effects of a naturally occurring new disease or biological attack. In the future, it may be more cost effective to pay the pharmaceutical industry ahead of time to produce treatments and vaccines rather than wait for a pandemic to develop.
  • The pandemic has also underscored the importance of manufacturing and stockpiling medical gear including personal protective equipment to avoid logjams in the supply chain and a reliance on other countries like China for these critical supplies. Providing accurate and accessible information to the public is also key; propaganda and disinformation must not be taken lightly.
  • Going forward, we should treat biosecurity threats with the same urgency in the 21st century as world leaders approached atomic bombs in the 20th century.
  • A first step would be for the UN Security Council to fund and enforce the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention.
brookegoodman

Millions to need food aid in days as virus exposes UK supply | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

  • Millions of people in the UK will need food aid in the coming days, food charities are warning, as the coronavirus outbreak threatens to quickly spiral into a crisis of hunger unless the government acts immediately to reinvent the way we feed ourselves.
  • Supermarket distribution systems, based on “just in time” supply chains, are struggling to cope with a sudden surge in demand since Covid-19 took hold. The most pressing concern is finding a way to feed the country’s most vulnerable and isolated people.
  • Anna Taylor, the Food Foundation’s director, said that between 4 million and 7 million people in lower risk categories are also affected by severe food insecurity or loneliness, so having to self-isolate could tip them into crisis.
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  • Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, London, and a former government adviser, said ministers have worked on the assumption that feeding Britain can be left to the market and big retailers. While ministers have been in discussion with supermarket chief executives during the pandemic, Lang argues they are failing to grasp the structural weaknesses in the food system and the scale of food poverty.
  • Lang added: “Borders are closing, lorries are being slowed down and checked. We only produce 53% of our own food in the UK. It’s a failure of government to plan.”
  • “Some £1bn extra food and groceries were bought by households in the last two to three weeks. That’s like Christmas but worse because it’s gone on for three times as long,” said Andrew Opie, director of food at the British Retail Consortium, the supermarket trade association.
  • Supermarkets have built supply chains of immense complexity and sophistication over the last four decades, affording customers a choice of more than 40,000 lines from around the world – from dozens of different kinds of pasta to a permanent global summertime of fresh fruits and vegetables.
  • The consequences of a disrupted supply chain will be most acute for the millions in households whose incomes are so low that they have depended on food banks or free meals at school or in daycare centres, which have now closed.
  • She added: “We may need the army to oversee biosecurity as caterers, for example in school kitchens, supply hubs and to enforce social distancing as people collect food from them.”
  • The government has also been working on a scheme for parents of the 1.6 million children who had been on free school meals, with vouchers which can be redeemed in supermarkets. Campaigners, however, argue the vouchers should be usable for nutritionally-balanced meals from school kitchens, which could be kept open.
  • The industry can see other threats on the near horizon. The British food system is largely built on a cheap and highly flexible labour force, which can be turned on and off like a tap. Now that is drying up as Brexit, travel restrictions and fear of illness are keeping away the migrants who have typically done that work.
  • It is creating around eight new hubs from which children in low-income families and isolated adults can have food delivered to their doors. “We have the data to identify people who are likely to be struggling and have mobilised staff,” said its director of public health, Jason Strelitz, but the council was still waiting for government to commit money.
Javier E

White House touts lab study showing coronavirus vulnerability to summer weather - The W... - 0 views

  • recent lab studies carried out by the agency at the U.S. Army’s biosecurity laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md.
  • the novel coronavirus, like many other viruses, does not survive as long when exposed to high amounts of ultraviolet light and warm and humid conditions.
  • The laboratory results show that increases in temperature, humidity and sunlight all can speed up how fast the virus is destroyed, based on measurements of its half-life when exposed to these elements.
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  • The half-life is a measurement of the time it takes for a given amount of the virus to become reduced by half.
  • the half-life of the virus, in the absence of sunlight (indoors), lowers from 18 hours to one hour when the temperature rises from around room temperature (70 to 75 degrees) to 95 degrees and the humidity increases from 20 percent to 80 percent.
  • The laboratory experiment also tested how the virus decays when exposed to various elements while suspended in the air. When the airborne virus at temperatures between 70 and 75 degrees is exposed to sunlight, its half-life decreases from around 60 minutes before exposure to 1.5 minutes after.
  • “Within the conditions we’ve tested to date, the virus in droplets of saliva survives best in indoors and dry conditions. … The virus dies quickest in the presence of direct sunlight.”
  • “Increasing the temperature and humidity of potentially contaminated indoor spaces appears to reduce the stability of the virus,” he said. “And extra care may be warranted for dry environments that do not have exposure to solar light.”
  • A slide presented by Bryan also recommended moving activities outside.
  • in the real world, the virus on a playground surface exposed to direct sunlight would die quickly, but the virus could survive longer in shaded areas.
  • If the summer months reduce the transmission rates of the virus, that would help officials’ efforts to squelch its spread without resorting to drastic mitigation measures, such as stay-at-home orders, that have had massive economic repercussions.
  • “It would be irresponsible for us to say summer will kill the virus,” Bryan said, calling summer conditions “another tool in toolbox” to use against the virus.
  • The weather is no panacea when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, considering that warm states, such as Georgia and Florida, already are seeing significant outbreaks, as are warm and humid countries, including Singapore. Even if the virus were to wane during the summer, a dreaded second wave would still be likely in the fall, as has happened with past pandemic flu outbreaks.
  • That report pointed to shortcomings in the studies published so far that trace the spread of the coronavirus and connect the pattern of spread to temperature and humidity, stating they “should be interpreted with caution.”
  • The NAS report states: “There is some evidence to suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may transmit less efficiently in environments with higher ambient temperature and humidity; however, given the lack of host immunity globally, this reduction in transmission efficiency may not lead to a significant reduction in disease spread” without mitigation measures, such as social distancing
delgadool

From Clinton to Trump, 20 years of boom and mostly bust in prepping for pandemics - 0 views

  • In April 1998, President Bill Clinton read a Richard Preston novel, "The Cobra Event," about a biological attack on the U.S. using a lethal virus that spreads like the common cold.
  • the result was the first federal government effort to marshal resources in preparation for a pandemic, including the creation of the National Emergency Medical Stockpile, which stowed vaccines and medical gear in secret locations around the country. Bernard was appointed as the first official on the National Security Council whose sole job was to focus on health threats.
  • Instead, it kicked off a boom-and-bust cycle of pandemic preparedness that persisted into the Trump administration. By many accounts, Trump fell on the bust side of the equation when he fired his top biosecurity adviser, allowed the disbanding of his global health unit, and initially downplayed the coronavirus as it spread across the world.
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  • The result was a perfect storm: A U.S. government not well prepared for a pandemic, run by a president who was slow to act after his intelligence community and public health advisers were warning about the dangers.
  • U.S. government over 20 years of successive administrations and Congresses failed to heed the warnings by taking basic steps that would have made it easier to quickly respond to a fast spreading and lethal pathogen. They didn't set up and fund a large volunteer medical reserve corps, for example, or build surplus hospital capacity, or create a system to quickly produce and deploy virus tests.
  • elected officials from both parties have never fully geared up for the biological threat, former officials and public health experts told NBC News. Each new White House deprioritized the issue, only to elevate it later after some defining event led to a presidential revelation. They then belatedly scrambled to respond with ambitious plans and initiatives, which faded after a few years.
  • "Here's the problem: In 10 years, if there's no pandemic, then everybody starts getting a bit relaxed," said Michael Leavitt, a former Utah governor who served as secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush administration.
  • When President George W. Bush took office in 2001, Bernard wrote a transition memo. He soon learned the Bush team had eliminated his job as White House biodefense czar.
  • But after 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks, the newly created Department of Homeland Security hired Bernard back, with added staff, to run a bio-preparedness unit.
  • After Bush read a book about the 1918 influenza pandemic in 2005, he forced his administration to double down on pandemic preparation, replenishing the stockpile and creating an early warning system.
  • officials deserved "at least a B-plus," and Mount Sinai virologist Peter Palese called the overall response "excellent." Republicans in Congress praised the CDC for developing a vaccine in six months.
  • When Ebola erupted in Africa in 2014, Obama brought in an outsider, Ron Klain, to run the federal response. The effort was widely praised, as was Obama's response to the 2016 Zika virus outbreak. But afterward, the Obama administration failed to fully replenish the federal stockpiles, according to research by ProPublica and USA Today.
  • Under Obama and a mostly Republican-controlled Congress, public health spending declined. Per capita public health spending, adjusted for inflation, rose from $39 in 1960 to $281 in 2008, and fell by 9.3 percent from 2008 to 2016, according to a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Public Health. It has fallen further under the Trump administration, records show.
  • During the transition from Obama to Trump, Obama officials conducted a tabletop exercise based on a pandemic with incoming Trump aides. But in his second year as president, Trump fired his top official in charge of pandemic response, Tom Bossert, and did not replace him. Trump then allowed his national security adviser to disband the NSC's global health unit. As a result, when alerts about coronavirus began to emanate from the intelligence and public health communities, there was no senior official in the White House to coordinate a response.
  • "Every administration has at some point in time gotten religion and realized there is a program and dusted it off and used it," Clarke told NBC News."Except this one."
  • "The disease-causing microbes of the planet," wrote Garrett, "far from having been defeated, [are] posing ever greater threats to humanity."
  • The exercise predicted many of the problems besetting the coronavirus response – confused lines of authority, shortages of medical gear, controversies over social distancing.
  • They failed to set up a system that would insure the rapid deployment of tests for a novel virus. And they failed to replenish a federal stockpile that hospital officials say is both insufficiently stocked and rife with defective gear.
  • Those failures — and the late start on gear purchases by the Trump administration — have severely hampered the U.S. response to coronavirus, said Scott Gottlieb, who ran the FDA from 2017 to 2019.
  • "In no way, shape or form can anyone say that we weren't warned, that the information wasn't available and shared with them," he said. "We've known about the risk of pandemics, and war gamed them literally going back some 30 years."
Javier E

Arriving in the US from Australia during Covid was like walking through the looking gla... - 1 views

  • As a trained epidemiologist with postgraduate qualifications in anthropology, I never thought I’d be a “participant observer” of a pandemic on two continents. But there I was, boomeranging in just five weeks from Australia to New York and back again. From a commitment to science, communitas and mateship here, to defiant disregard for public health, contempt for science and mystical faith in a super-spreader leader in the United States.
  • On arrival in New York no one stopped me to take my temperature, or to register me, and there was no information about coronavirus exposure, let alone quarantine. The usual madness at ground transport prevailed as passengers arriving from all across the globe hailed taxis or Ubers, or shouted to waiting family – perfect conditions for spreading coronavirus.
  • in Melbourne, millions of people were struggling under 11 weeks of lockdown, the price that society as a whole paid to suppress the virus, and suppress it they did: as I write no new locally transmitted cases have been recorded in more than a month
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  • over in America, it seemed to be a riff on “Live free or die”, the actual state motto of New Hampshire. To me it looked more like live free and die. Continue congregating secretly or publicly in groups exceeding 10,000 for prayer, weddings and other celebrations? Check. Cover only your mouth, free your nose? Check. Social distancing? You gotta be kidding.
  • Flying back to Sydney on US election day was momentous. It also felt like whiplash. The Australian governments swung into action even before we stepped off the plane in Sydney. Once in the terminal it was full-on with precise coordination across jurisdictions and levels of government – immigration, biosecurity, state health authorities, police, army, air force
  • It embarrassed me that an air force officer was pushing my baggage trolley as he escorted me to my room. Of course this wasn’t a courtesy: he was there to make sure that I was securely locked in my room without a key, open window or balcony for escape.
  • Australia has shown that the response to a pandemic needs to be strict. Lives and a nation’s economy hang in the balance. The response needs to be evidence-based. Precise. Coordinated. Thorough. Caring. Impartial. Transparent. Legally enacted and enforced. Strongly led and clearly communicated. Tough. Really tough. Because that’s what it takes to control a pandemic.
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