Pandemics Past and Present with Jeremy Farrar

Society can learn critical lessons from studying past pandemics.

Hundreds of thousands of people die each year of influenza. Doctors know a lot about that medical condition, but it can still cause a global catastrophe.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a highly contagious respiratory illness, emerged from the wet markets of southern China in 2003, and spread across that country for months before it was identified. But when SARS hit Hong Kong, its existence was exposed to the world. The virus quickly spread to Vietnam, infecting large numbers of people, including doctors and nurses.

Astute clinicians recognized that they were seeing only the tip of a SARS infection iceberg. This scenario was similar to that of outbreaks of bird flu, Zika and Ebola. Epidemiologist Carlo Urbani prevented a wider epidemic by asking authorities to quarantine the hospital where he worked. About 45 people died in that hospital, and Urbani himself later succumbed to SARS. Urbani’s death was a wake-up call for the public health community in Southeast Asia. The disease is often called “the world’s first 21st century epidemic.” It also follows ...