The media are broadcasting warnings from scientists who say two emerging viruses may trigger the next pandemic.
A Newsweek headline published Thursday reads, “Scientists Raise Alarm About Two Viruses That Could Cause the Next Pandemic.” The UK’s Independent reported Wednesday, “Two viruses emerging from animals could be the next ‘major’ public health threats to American families, scientists warn.” And the University of Florida (UF) announced Wednesday, “Scientists say these two viruses may become the next public health threats.”
The viruses they’re talking about are influenza D virus and canine coronavirus. Both have animal origins. “If surveillance and diagnostics continue to lag, influenza D virus and canine coronavirus have real potential to trigger outbreaks,” according to the UF article.
That article cites as its main source a January report published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the journal of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One of the co-authors is John Lednicky, Ph.D., a research professor at UF. “Our review of the literature indicates these two viruses pose respiratory disease threats to humans, yet little has been done to respond to or prevent infection from these viruses,” Lednicky said. “If these viruses evolve the capacity to easily transmit person to person, they may be able to cause epidemics or pandemics since most people won’t have immunity to them.”
Influenza D
The influenza D virus was first detected in pigs with respiratory illness back in 2011, according to the CDC article. But it has since been detected in cattle, other livestock, and wildlife, including camels, deer, giraffes, kangaroos, llamas, wallabies, and wildebeests. The animals most susceptible to it are cattle. The report claims that studies show the virus has caused infections in humans, mostly those who work with animals, but it dubs those infections “subclinical,” meaning they didn’t cause any symptoms. Nevertheless, this virus “may have more opportunity to gain characteristics that would threaten humans,” according to the report.
Canine Coronavirus
The canine coronavirus can cause gastrointestinal illness in dogs. In 2021, the authors of the CDC paper write, they reported that this virus was found in a child hospitalized with pneumonia in Malaysia. “Since then, CCoV-HuPn-2018 has been found in people with respiratory illness living in Thailand, Vietnam and in the state of Arkansas, demonstrating this strain of canine coronavirus is already circulating across continents.”
In their conclusion to the CDC report, the authors cite the old English proverb, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us,” in an effort make the point that it would be a shame for humanity to be taken by surprise again. “If we wish to avoid being fooled again by a novel virus suddenly gaining efficient human-to-human transmissibility and causing large human epidemics, we would be wise to develop better surveillance systems and new countermeasures for these and similar viruses.” Better monitoring, more reliable tests, treatments, and vaccines are the answer, we are told.
What’s the Real Threat?
It would indeed be a shame for people to be fooled again. Except, many would argue, the general population should be more worried about being duped into believing the “experts” again. With Covid-19, the authorities fooled people into believing that natural immunity was inferior to a vaccine. They fooled millions into believing that cheap and proven off-label remedies didn’t work. They fabricated a six-foot distancing rule that had no basis in science and imposed it on the world. They created hysteria over cloth and tissue masks that were never effective in constraining a microbial virus. They implemented draconian house-arrest dictates that exacerbated already existing illnesses as well as depression, substance abuse, and suicide rates. They trampled over the constitutional right to assemble. On top of all that, they coerced billions of people around the world into jamming into their bodies a new, unproven technology that continues to prove permanently detrimental.
In other words, the experts made Covid-19 worse.
This isn’t to say that a truly harmful virus or two won’t emerge. Given the reckless experimenting happening in labs around the world, it’s very possible — perhaps likely. When that happens, average people will be in quite the bind. The federal authorities, who will be the primary choreographers of the response, will be completely untrustworthy. That will leave the general population in a position of having to sift truth from lies while threats emerge on multiple fronts.
It will be a great challenge, but a silver lining to the Covid experience is that people will less likely to blindly listen to the government.
