• Question: Do you think we will ever experience a pandemic that can wipe off humanity in the near future?

    Asked by nikki27 to Rachel on 19 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Rachel Dakin

      Rachel Dakin answered on 19 Nov 2013:


      Hi Nikki – good question.
      I think we could experience a wide reaching pandemics in the future however I’m not sure if they would be big enough to wipe out humanity. That’s because I hope scientists would now have the tools they need to act fast and make a vaccination or similar treatment. It would obviously depend on the virus though. The better the virus is at infecting the host and spreading to new ones the quicker it will pass between people and take a hold.
      People have become quite worried about the chance of a pandemic recently because viruses have managed to cross the species barrier – go from an animal to a human. We have seen this with swine flu and H5N1 flu and just this year mers virus which is believed to have come from camels to people. This virus isn’t very contagious so not a threat of a pandemic but shows us that studying the way viruses infect hosts and can cross the species barrier is very important.

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