Nathan Wolfe
Nathan Wolfe
Nathan D. Wolfeis an American virologist. He is currently Director of Global Viral and the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University. Dr. Wolfe spent over eight years conducting biomedical research in both sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In 2007, he founded Global Viral with the goal of developing an early warning system for pandemics to monitor the transmission of infectious diseases from animals to humans. The initiative currently coordinates a staff of over 100...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth24 August 1970
CountryUnited States of America
catch cities contact humans majority spread swine throughout vast viruses
Swine flu is not an anomaly. We know that swine flu - like the vast majority of new outbreaks - comes from animals. We should be monitoring those animals and the humans that come into contact with them, so we can catch these viruses early, before they infect major cities and spread throughout the world.
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The reality is: By the time swine flu got on the radar screen of global public health, it had already spread. It was already in the States, it was in Mexico, it was in New Zealand. By the time it reaches that point, you've lost the ability to contain it.
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There are commonalities among all the pandemics that occur, and we can learn from them. One commonality is that they all come from animals. And the other commonality is that we wait too long.
certainly chance contain earlier entering human monitor spread stage viruses
If we can contain and monitor animal viruses at an earlier stage - when they're first entering human populations, preferably before they've had a chance to become human-adapted, certainly before they've had a chance to spread - we can head off pandemics altogether.
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We live in a world fraught with risk from new pandemics. Fortunately, we also now live in an era with the tools to build a global immune system.
As a species, I think we have no choice but to try and forecast pandemics.
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We see new things all the time. We see new retroviruses out there - which is the category that HIV falls into - and we're very, very concerned because this is the part of the world where HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans.
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If we can provide even a few months of early warning for just one pandemic, the benefits will outweigh all the time and energy we're devoting. Imagine preventing health crises, not just responding to them.
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With epidemics, people have been standing on the shore, waiting for the gusher to hit the ocean. But to prevent epidemics, you have to look at the various little sources that feed into the river.
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Pandemics do not occur randomly. From malaria and influenza to AIDS and SARS, the lethal microbes have come, in the first instance, from animals, especially wild animals. And we increasingly know which parts of the world pose the greatest risk for future incursions.
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Because pandemics almost always begin with the transmission of an animal microbe to a human, it's work that takes me all around the globe - from rain forest hunting camps of central Africa to wild animal markets of east Asia.
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Seasonal flu is now a pandemic that lasts for years and years because you've got so many people that it's jumping back between northern and southern hemispheres and moving itself around the world. By the time it gets back to where it started, it's changed sufficiently so that people are no longer immune.
approach deal drop future helps hugely public risks sars
When there is an influenza threat, drop everything and focus on risks from influenza pandemics. When SARS spreads, focus on unknown respiratory diseases. This approach helps to quell public concern, but it's a hugely inefficient way to deal with future risks.
thinking people despair
Many people on our planet right now despair; they think we’ve reached a point where we’ve discovered most of the things. I’m going tell you right now: Please don’t despair.