Republicans Shut Down Program Identifying Dangerous Animal Viruses That Could Infect Humans

The premise of this web site database in January 2017 was to track what Republicans and Trump are doing that often does not ever reach the mainsteam.  Here, unfortunately, is a perfect example.

In a move that worries many public health experts, the federal government is quietly shutting down a surveillance program for dangerous animal viruses that someday may infect humans.

The United Nations Environment Program estimates that a new animal disease that can also infect humans is discovered every four months. Ending the program, experts fear, will leave the world more vulnerable to lethal pathogens like Ebola and MERS that emerge from unexpected places, such as bat-filled trees, gorilla carcasses and camel barns.

Since it's unlikely any of you reading this have ever heard of this program, here's a few details:

The program, known as Predict and run by the United States Agency for International Development, was inspired by the 2005 H5N1 bird flu scare. Launched 10 years ago, the project has cost about $207 million.

The initiative has collected over 140,000 biological samples from animals and found over 1,000 new viruses, including a new strain of Ebola. Predict also trained about 5,000 people in 30 African and Asian countries, and has built or strengthened 60 medical research laboratories, mostly in poor countries.

The goal of Predict was to speed up and organize the previously haphazard hunt for zoonotic diseases — those that may jump from animals to humans. In recent years, scientists have discovered many lethal viruses lurking in wild and domestic animals.

It has long been known, of course, that AIDS originated in chimpanzees and probably was first contracted by bushmeat hunters. Ebola circulates in bats and apes, while SARS was found in captive civet cats in China.

Republican logic: "Haven’t had a fire lately. Guess we don’t need fire department or home inspectors." 

Dennis Carroll, the former director of USAID’s emerging threats division who helped design Predict, oversaw it for a decade and retired when it was shut down. The surveillance project is closing because of “the ascension of risk-averse bureaucrats,” he said.  Congress, along with the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, were “enormously supportive,” said Dr. Carroll.

The end of the program “is definitely a loss,” said Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit global health organization that received funding from the program. “Predict was an approach to heading off pandemics, instead of sitting there waiting for them to emerge and then mobilizing. That’s expensive.  The United States spent $5 billion fighting Ebola in West Africa,” he added. “This costs far less.”

It's as if Republicans stay up late at night thinking of things they can do to hurt America.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/health/predict-usaid-viruses.html