Getting Started…
The following resources comprise the ‘required component’ of this week’s content, providing ‘An Introduction to Pandemics, Biorisks and Pandemic Prevention’. Once you’ve completed the readthrough below, please take the time to explore the resources labelled as ‘Mandatory’ - these should take approximately five to ten minutes each to either watch, listen to or read. If you have the time or the inclination, you could also have a look through the ‘Optional Resources’ provided below and further expand upon your understanding of biorisk and pandemic prevention. The ‘Optional Resources’ typically take longer to work through (e.g. Dr. Greg Lewis’ podcast episode discussing pandemic prevention has a ‘runtime’ of over two hours), so you might want to consider listening to any audio/video resources at 1.25x or 1.5x speed.
Once you’ve completed the introductory component for this week, return to the ‘Getting Started’ section and select one (or more) of the three optional ‘streams’ linked below - each of which explores a different aspect of pandemic prevention strategy. These ‘streams’ can be broadly divided into ‘bioscience’, ‘social science’ and ‘technology’. You are required to complete the introductory readthrough and explore the mandatory resources associated with your chosen stream, but are not required to work through any of the content for the other two streams. That said, you’re also very welcome to dip into those other sections and pick out any resources which feel interesting to you - even if they don’t match up with your primary choice. Having completed all required content, you can begin to work on the week’s concluding activity, as detailed below.
Week 1: Select an individual or organisation whose contributions to pandemic prevention efforts you believe to be significant (and which are relevant to your chosen discipline/section) and write a short essay (between 300 and 500 words) explaining their work and its impact.
Additional Content 🔬
A Tale of Two Pandemics: The Importance of Social Science and Economics
A Bioweapon at Your Fingertips: The Importance of Engineering and AI Alignment
An Introduction to Pandemics, Biorisks and Pandemic Prevention
At the moment, the term ‘pandemic’ might seem synonymous with the worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus just four years ago - but it carries a significantly more complex meaning. A ‘pandemic’ is defined as the sudden outbreak of an infectious disease across multiple continents, typically associated with high rates of both morbidity and mortality. Essentially, a pandemic occurs when a particularly nasty pathogen goes global - and this is far from a recent phenomenon. The first pandemic ever to be documented occurred in 430 B.C. during the Peloponnesian War, with a plague of Ethiopian origin sweeping through Athenian troops as they resisted Spartan siege. Symptoms included vomiting, fever, coughing up blood and paralysis - those infected typically dying within a week of the disease’s symptomatic manifestation. Over four years, the ‘Athenian Plague’ claimed the lives of over a quarter of the city’s population, effectively ensuring the eventual Spartan victory.
This pandemic was to be famously followed by the Antonine and Justinian Plagues of the Roman world, the outbreak of the Black Death throughout the European Continent and the ‘first true global pandemic’ caused by the Spanish Flu (the H1N1 influenza strain) in 1918. However, our memory of the history of the pandemic is largely shaped by its effect on contemporary public life. In 2009, a new H1N1 strain of influenza, originating in pigs, began to spread rapidly throughout southeast Asia and Africa, infecting between 700 million and 1.4 billion individuals globally. Just a year later, WHO declared the end of the pandemic and whilst the ‘swine flu’ strain of influenza continues to circulate, its presence is no longer considered an international emergency. For most infected individuals, symptoms were relatively mild and the associated mortality rate was significantly lower than that of other pandemics, such as the Spanish Flu - decreasing the global sense of urgency. In contrast, the high mortality rate associated with the coronavirus - some estimates suggesting around 20% in China’s Hubei province, the initial epicentre of the pandemic - paired with the comparative severity of its associated symptoms (ranging from shortness of breath to a long-term loss of the capacity to taste and smell) - stimulated sustained international panic, as was well-communicated by global media outlets.