COVID-19 HAS TAUGHT US THAT FORESIGHT AND TECH ARE A WINNING COMBINATION PREPPING FOR THE NEXT BIG ONE

ABSTRACT

When the Spanish flu pandemic swept across the globe in 1918, it ravaged a population with essentially no technological countermeasures. There were no diagnostic tests, no mechanical ventilators, and no antiviral or widely available anti-inflammatory medications other than aspirin. The first inactivated-virus vaccines would not become available until 1936. An estimated 50 million people died. Today, a best-case scenario predicts 1.3 million fatalities from COVID-19 in 2020, according to projections by Imperial College London, and rapidly declining numbers after that. That in a world with 7.8 billion people-more than four times as many as in 1918. Many factors have lessened mortality this time, including better implementation of social-distancing measures. But technology is also a primary bulwark. Since January of this year, roughly US $50 billion has been spent in the United States alone to ramp up testing, diagnosis, modeling, treatment, vaccine creation, and other tech-based responses