Touts

 

Touts

The World Health Assembly in May of this year plans to divert $10.5 billion of aid away from diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. Instead, that money will go toward combating the threat of viruses newly caught from wildlife. Behind this initiative, endorsed by the Group of 20 summit in Bali in 2022, is the assumption that the threat of pandemics from spillovers of animal viruses is dramatically increasing. Perhaps this assumption is an echo of the stories that HIV jumped from monkeys to humans and, of course, the Wuhan disaster.

Matt Ridley believes the assumption of increased movement of infectious diseases from animals to people is false. A new report from the University of Leeds, prepared in part by former World Health Organization executives, finds that the claims made by the G-20 in support of this agenda either are unsupported by evidence, contradict their own cited sources, or fail to correct for improved detection of pathogens. Over the past decade, the burden and risk of spillover has been relatively small and probably decreasing. The Leeds authors conclude: “The implication is that the largest investment in international public health in history is based on misinterpretations of key evidence as well as a failure to thoroughly analyze existing data.”

This is not reassuring. Somebody--that is one group of scientists or another--is completely wrong. And is encouraging the spending of huge amounts of money to follow their suggestions.

Scientists have become like touts at a racetrack, invested in their own predictions.