Analyzing causes and preparing for the inevitable

This opinion piece in the New York Times this morning seems relevant to our class this semester and specifically to this week.

It’s written by Ian Lipkin, Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, whose work involves investigating the origins of outbreaks. He and his team have had many successes, but in the piece he focuses on outbreak cases in which a definitive origin couldn’t be determined — like the West Nile virus in New York in 1999.

Lipkin argues that we should dedicate energy to preventing risks, even in situations where clear answers never arrive: “Finding the origin of a viral outbreak can be incredibly difficult, even with full government cooperation and the best available technologies … It’s important to try, because the insights into how a virus emerged may be useful in reducing the risk of future outbreaks. But these efforts and debates over uncertainties cannot come at the expense of action. We cannot wait for answers that may never come before doing what must be done to prevent the next pandemic.”

W. Ian Lipkin, “Finding the Origin of a Pandemic Is Difficult. Preventing One Shouldn’t Be“, New York Times, Tuesday, April 25, 2023