All language subtitles for Americas Book of Secrets s04e10 Deadly Pandemics

Deadly diseases that strike without
warning and spread across the planet.

The Black Death killed millions upon
millions of people.

Almost like a zombie death.

Lethal biological weapons of mass
destruction.

Anthrax, botulism, tularemia, I call
them the chess pieces of doom, and

mysterious viruses.

that may rival the worst plagues in
history.

Hopefully, we'll conquer whatever
happens together.

Throughout human history, deadly
pandemics have arisen, devastating local

populations before spreading across the
entire world, crippling economies,

destroying societies, and leaving mass
death in their wake.

Are these global pandemics simply acts
of God?

caused by natural forces beyond our
control?

Or does mankind bear much of the blame,
as well as hold the key to the ultimate

cure?

Perhaps the truth can be found in
America's book of secrets.

March 11th, 2020.

The World Health Organization announces
that the outbreak of COVID -19, also

known as the novel coronavirus, has
become a global pandemic.

As the number of cases and deaths caused
by the lethal virus surge higher and

higher, day after day, countries around
the world struggle to provide

care for the unprecedented wave of
patients that need treatment.

The COVID -19 pandemic is honestly the
biggest public health emergency of our

lifetime. And it has been sobering to
see how quickly a disease like that can

spread around the world.

When I go to work and I see a line
outside of the emergency department,

there's not enough ICU nurses,
respiratory therapists, even medication,

to help the patients who are suffering
from novel coronavirus.

The hospitals become overwhelmed, and so
patients who needed the care for COVID

may not get the best care. And in
addition, all the other patients who

may not be cared for appropriately.

When a pandemic starts, so many people
are going to be infected.

And unfortunately, many people will
suffer and die.

So being on the front line, I realized
what a pandemic can do to

so many people, my colleagues and
myself.

By October of 2020, more than one
million people had died from COVID -19

worldwide, making it the worst pandemic
in more than a century.

The devastation caused by this disease
is a sobering reminder of the dire

threat. posed by viruses.

A virus is an intracellular parasite
that enters the host and

basically hijacks the host cell's
machinery to create more viral proteins

and more viral particles and spreads
itself that way.

They take over our cells, they use our
own bodies to reproduce, and then...

They'll cause destruction in many of the
organs in our body.

With COVID -19, we're dealing with
something completely new.

And so I think there's a lot of lessons
learned we have here.

I think we learned how important it is
to have rapid diagnostics.

I wrote an article not too long ago
about the military battlefield lessons.

We talk about the war against COVID.

You need to have intelligence
preparation in the battlefield. You need

what's the battle space.

Entire U .S. is a battle space. You need
to deny the enemy, conceal and cover.

How do you do that? You do that with
diagnostics.

As the COVID -19 virus raged across the
globe and nations joined in an

unprecedented effort to contain it, the
answer to one daunting question proved

both mysterious and elusive.

Just exactly where did this virus come
from?

The best science that we have says that
the virus that causes COVID -19 probably

started in animals somewhere in China.

Might have been a bat, might have been
some other type of animal.

It was very likely, in my opinion, that
this virus came probably from a bat,

because we know there are multiple
coronaviruses that circulate in bats.

And then from there, it went to humans
and person -to -person spread and then

amplified.

I think actually what would help to
solve this mystery is really to have an

international unbiased team that
actually goes to try to trace back the

of the virus back to that first patient
zero.

And that's the best way to solve this
mystery. But we'll have to see whether

that'll ever happen.

Most human diseases that we're worried
about actually start in animals.

Some deadly viruses that infect humans
that have animal origins are Ebola,

smallpox, influenza, the virus that
causes COVID -19, rabies,

Nipah virus, which causes encephalitis
in some parts of the world, and

the list goes on and on.

Despite the opinions of some that COVID
-19 spread from animals to humans,

numerous experts, including Robert
Redfield, the former head of the CDC,

begun to speculate that it may have
escaped from an experimental lab in

China.

If that is the case, then just how could
such a disastrous event occur?

There are four ways a pathogen could
escape, quote, unquote, escape a lab.

The first would be through some type of
aerosol release through one of the vents

into the atmosphere.

The second is if an animal were infected
and then somehow got out of the lab.

A third way would be if someone were
intentionally to try to steal something

take it out of the lab.

And then the fourth is that someone
who's working in the laboratory gets

inadvertently infected and then they go
out into the community not realizing

they're potentially contagious, they get
ill, they can spread it.

Washington, D .C.

October 2nd, 2020.

President Donald J. Trump tests positive
for COVID -19, joining a growing list

of world leaders infected by the
potentially deadly virus.

Although President Trump recovers within
10 days, his exposure demonstrates the

grave risk that disease has posed to
heads of state.

And in fact, national security experts.

are increasingly concerned about the
threat of pandemics being used as

weapons. A bioweapon is an infectious
disease agent like a bacteria or a virus

that somebody chooses to use for what I
call nefarious purposes.

So it's something that they might grow
and then try to expose people to either

to cause fear and panic or to get people
sick.

There are certain properties that some
pathogens have that lend themselves more

favorably to serving as a weapon. So
something that's available, something

could be grown up in large quantities,
something stable in the environment such

that it can be released over a large
population, whether it's a battlefield

city environment.

The CDC calls them the Category A threat
agents.

Things like anthrax.

botulism, plague, tularemia, smallpox,
and viral hemorrhagic fevers. I

call them the chess pieces of doom. The
case fatality rates for these different

category A agents range from tularemia
with about 30 % death rate up to

something like Ebola, which is 90 %
fatal without countermeasures.

Smallpox is a really interesting
bioweapon because smallpox has been

It doesn't occur naturally anymore, but
we also have a population of people who

really have never been vaccinated
against it, and that makes us really

vulnerable. So smallpox is probably my
number one worry, and then anthrax is my

number two because there has been a
previous bioterrorism event in the U .S.

involving anthrax.

In 2001, there was a bioterrorism attack
on U .S. soil.

spread in letters that were sent to the
U .S. Post Office, and they got a lot of

people sick.

But just how likely is the prospect of a
devastating virus being used as a

bioweapon?

There are those who claim that not only
is it possible, but that it already

happened centuries ago, during the
deadliest pandemic in recorded history.

May 26, 2021.

The Democratic Republic of Congo.

Health officials report that 11 victims
have died from the bubonic plague.

The government moves quickly to contain
the outbreak, providing the sick with

powerful antibiotics.

A treatment that didn't exist 700 years
ago, when the disease touched off the

worst pandemic in history.

The Black Death is really the pandemic
that eclipses all others.

I mean, it killed millions upon millions
of people in medieval Europe beginning

in the 14th century.

The Black Death lasted from about 1347
to

1349, 1350.

Roughly a third of the European
population died.

Italy was devastated.

England was.

France was.

The stories behind it just, they send
chills up my spine. It almost sounds

an episode of zombie death.

Big, orange, like balls on their hands
and arms.

The fingers were green.

We know now that this was something
called Yersinia pestis.

This is a bacteria.

So it's easy for me to say now, it's
Yersinia pestis.

They didn't know that back then.

Despite not understanding the exact
mechanism by which the disease spread,

people in the Middle Ages sensed that
the Black Death could afflict anyone who

came into contact with it.

This knowledge gave rise to one of the
earliest known examples of personal

protective equipment, or PPE.

The plague doctor outfit was essentially
a medieval hazmat suit. It had a

kind of very hard covering so that the
doctor wouldn't be sprayed with bodily

fluids. And then there was a beak, which
was filled with flowers or

herbs or anything that smelled nice to
keep the stench of death away from the

doctor, with the idea being that...

bad smells or miasma is really what was
causing people to get sick.

It was the best hypothesis they had.

The Black Death, now known as the
Bubonic Plague, has been studied by

and scientists for centuries in order to
better understand its destructive

power.

And it's a power that was actually
unleashed on a medieval battlefield.

becoming one of the earliest known forms
of biological warfare.

Khafa, Crimea, 1346.

For three years, this port city on the
Black Sea, part of the Republic of

was under siege from Mongolian Tartar
invaders.

This is an old walled city, And inside
the city were Genoese.

And Tatar invaders came and laid siege
to the city.

They surrounded the city. But then there
was an outbreak, a plague amongst the

Tatar ranks.

The Mongol population was starting to
get very sick.

And whether this is a form of
biochemical warfare, psychological

both, what they ended up doing was...

catapulting the corpses of their people
over the walls of Caffa and landing on

the Genoese people repeatedly.

And the Genoese defenders eventually
started having their own outbreaks of

plague within the city.

The Black Death was actually used as
kind of an early bioweapon. That would

actually incredibly efficient because
the town under siege is a place where

people packed very closely together.

So that disease could spread from dead
bodies and spread to the defenders.

The use of the black death in warfare
underscores the deadly potential of a

pandemic being utilized as a bioweapon.

And today in the United States, it is a
scenario that some believe the federal

government must be ready for.

Now more than ever.

If we had a very, very severe pandemic,
one that was extremely deadly, much more

so than we'll be faced with COVID -19.

The continuity of government would be
one of the biggest questions we'd have

face. The continuity of government
apparatus is gigantic. We don't see it,

it's made up of the airplanes and the
bunkers and the procedures for moving

successors to the presidency and the
communication systems that nets it all

together.

It's a multi -billion dollar a year
operation, but that operation has really

been created to deal with two very
distinct scenarios.

Nuclear war or a terrorist attack on
Washington. That's it.

And so when coronavirus came along, I
think that the people behind continuity

government didn't quite know what to do.

whole model had to basically be thrown
away.

If members of Congress got sick, if the
president or the vice president got

sick, if the successors to the
presidency under the Constitution were

unavailable, what exactly were the
rules?

It will be very interesting as we move
forward in the world of emergency

preparedness and continuity of
government, whether they deal with a

a very different way.

That's the challenge of the future.

What would happen if a pandemic were to
strike down a country's leader?

Could it change the course of history?

Some historians argue that it has
already happened.

It helped to sow the seeds for the
greatest war the world has ever known.

Breivik Mission, Alaska.

1997.

Pathologist Dr. Johan Hulten excavates
an indigenous village graveyard,

searching for something that has eluded
scientists for decades.

The cause of the 1918 influenza
pandemic, also known as the

Spanish flu.

Johan Hulten had heard about...

a town about 80 miles outside of Nome in
Alaska called Brevik Mission.

And it had had a population of about 80,
of which almost all of them had been

killed from the 1918 flu.

So he got the approval to disinter some
of the bodies in the hopes

that the permafrost had preserved the
flu virus and that they could research

And he found the corpse.

of a woman who had been morbidly obese.

But it was, in fact, not the permafrost
that preserved the virus, but

her fat storage.

They removed some of that lung tissue,
and from that they were able to then

that to the CDC where we were able to
understand it better, sequence the

that is, understand the genetic code of
that virus.

After successfully sequencing the virus
that caused the Spanish flu, scientists

were finally able to unlock the secrets
of the most severe pandemic of the 20th

century.

So the virus was able to reproduce
itself very quickly and make the host

very quickly as well, and also very
readily pass between people.

But there was no one sort of magic
bullet, I guess, if you will, that made

incredibly powerful. In fact, it was
more like a perfect storm of all these

different features when put together,
created this extremely virulent virus.

It was referred to in 1918 as purple
death.

So that was a terrible virus. We were
able to recover it, understand it.

And then from that, we're able to make
diagnostics, treatments and vaccines

can help prevent that from happening
again.

However, while thankfully medical
science has developed the technology to

protect us from the Spanish flu today,
when it first struck in 1918, it quickly

spread across the globe, leaving
millions dead in its wake.

The 1918 virus was much more dangerous,
much more virulent than COVID -19.

People could die in as little as 12
hours after the first symptoms.

The people who were dying were young.

The peak age for death was in the 20s.

Children were dying in enormous numbers.

So 95 % or so of the excess mortality
was people younger than 65.

Exactly the opposite of today.

The 1918 virus killed somewhere between
50 and 100 million people.

If you adjust for population, that would
be the equivalent of 225 to 450 million

people today.

In 1918, the U .S., of course, was at
war.

And the focus of the government was
entirely on the war and nothing else.

The government was quite willing, to put
it bluntly, to lie and to put the best

face on everything.

Woodrow Wilson, the president, never
even made any public statement of any

about the pandemic.

Woodrow Wilson may not have taken the
pandemic seriously, but he was not

to its effects.

Wilson contracted the influenza virus
during the Paris Peace Conference at the

end of World War I.

Woodrow Wilson had put together what
were known as 14 points.

toward the end of World War I, where the
world leaders were meeting in Paris.

And his 14 points were essentially how
we can work with Germany so something

like this never happens again. And it
was very progressive, especially for its

day, and he really stood by it.

Now, Woodrow Wilson also traveled to
Paris on the same ship that had

shipped many, many sick soldiers
overseas.

So while he was in Paris, Wilson became
very sick.

Everybody around him remarked on how his
mind was affected, how he

couldn't function, he couldn't process
information.

He was physically weak.

And he insisted on returning to the
negotiations while he was still set.

During the peace talks, President Wilson
had argued that America and its allies

should not punish Germany by imposing a
crippling war settlement.

But due to his weakened condition,
Wilson was unable to fight for less

punishment than the one ultimately
brought against the nation of Germany.

And the course of history was
irrevocably altered.

Clemenceau, the French prime minister,
hated Germany.

Germany was blamed for the war, had
reparations, had territory stripped from

The peace treaty was so bad that almost
every historian says that the treaty was

a significant force in the rise of the
Nazis and leading to World

War II.

You could definitely make an argument
that it then led to a person like Adolf

Hitler, charismatic,

nationalist,

dramatic, all the things that people who
are

suffering, who are poor, who are broke,
who are starving, can look to someone

like that and see a potential leader.

If the Spanish flu of 1918 can teach
mankind anything, it's to always be

prepared.

But how do we get ready?

Some say that to battle future
pandemics, we would need to have an

monitoring the world for emerging
diseases.

They would race to the site of an
outbreak, delivering vital on -the

information to scientists that could
fast -track treatments and vaccines.

Well, it turns out...

Such teams do exist, and they're known
as the disease detectives.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 21,
1976.

More than 2 ,000 U .S. military veterans
gather at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel

for an annual three -day convention of
the American Legion.

In the days following the event, 182 of
the Legionnaires fall ill with a new

unidentified form of pneumonia.

As doctors struggle to make sense of the
mysterious illness, 29 people develop

severe symptoms and perish.

It was an unexplained pneumonia.

We couldn't figure out what it was. None
of the normal things that cause

pneumonia turned out to be the cause.

To solve the mystery, the Centers for
Disease Control called upon America's

first line of defense against emerging
pandemics, the Epidemic Intelligence

Service, or EIS.

The Epidemic Intelligence Service was
established in 1951, and the reason why

came to be is that there were concerns
about biological threats to the people

the United States.

And so the program was put together so
we'd have a workforce.

ready to deploy to investigate any
possible biological warfare or threats

against the United States.

Essentially, they are kind of like FBI
agents, only instead of going after

criminals and terrorists, they go after
disease.

So when an outbreak, especially a sort
of outbreak of unknown origin, pops up

the U .S. or sometimes around the world,
the CDC will send in epidemiologists

from the service to figure out what's
going on. And the CDC's disease

are the best in the world at this.

The Legionnaire outbreak in 1976 sparked
nationwide fear about the unknown

disease that had claimed the lives of 29
victims.

So the disease detectives raced to solve
the mystery.

They scoured the hotel where the
Legionnaires had held their convention,

discovered a mysterious bacterium in the
hotel's air conditioning system, and

took samples of it to be analyzed at the
Centers for Disease Control.

And so they sent those specimens to CDC,
and they were able to characterize an

unusual bacillus.

And they found this thing that's now
called Legionella, or Legionnaire's

disease. And so that's something that's
in water.

It's very different than other bacterial
causes.

You can find it in cooling towers that
are on top of buildings.

You can find it in whirlpool spas.

sometimes the swimming pools and other
sources of water.

And when people walk past it, they
breathe in those droplets, and then they

the bacteria deep in their lungs, and
then they get a bad pneumonia, and it

be fake.

Our disease detectives are looking at
how can they intervene to ensure upon

safety of the public.

And then after they've investigated and
they've collected information and they

think that they might know an
intervention, the next step is obviously

communicate that.

The rapid discovery of Legionella
bacterium brought the potential outbreak

halt.

Thanks to the information provided by
the EIS disease detectives, air

conditioning units and water systems
across the country were retrofitted to

minimize the risk.

The program has evolved quite a bit
since 1951 when it was originally just

physicians and all males.

So now we include not just physicians
but nurses.

veterinarians, PhD -level scientists.

It's a real diverse skill set of people
that are prepared to deploy and respond

to emerging threats.

EIF leaders have not only expanded their
membership to include experts in

different fields of research and
technology, they've also expanded to

operate all around the world.

However... They must accept potentially
deadly risks to their own health in the

process.

There was an outbreak I participated in
in Uganda where I went in a cave that

was full of thousands and thousands of
bats that might be infected with Marburg

virus, which is a deadly virus related
to Ebola.

And I really geared up when I went in
there.

Not only was I wearing...

battery -operated respirator to help me
breathe pure air. I had to wear a helmet

because I might hit my head on the rocks
in the cave.

And I actually had to wear snake chaps
because there were snakes in that cave,

including spitting cobras, that you
wanted to protect yourself against.

And that's what has made it so
particularly dangerous.

Disease detectives myself have been
involved in SARS in 2003, West Nile

Ebola in 2014 -15, Zika, and now most
recently the emergence of COVID

-19. They're the smart people we put out
into the field in order to figure

things out as quickly as possible.

For our disease detectives, collecting
the most valid and reliable evidence is

their top priority.

Not collecting data for the sake of
publication or fame.

They're collecting this information.

so that there can be public health
action taken.

They're ready on a moment's notice to
deploy to any new or emerging public

health threat.

What happens if the disease detectives
are too late and a major epidemic is

already spreading?

Do epidemiologists have the means to
predict where a virus might go and

it before it spirals out of control?

It's entirely possible.

And one of the most promising tools just
might turn out to be a video game.

September 13th, 2005.

Irvine, California.

Video game developer Blizzard
Entertainment introduces a surprise

popular online role -playing game, World
of Warcraft.

A virtual virus.

with the potential to infect characters
within the game's fantasy universe.

They call the virus Corrupted Blood.

The Corrupted Blood experience in World
of Warcraft was essentially a new patch

for the game.

Corrupted Blood was intended to be sort
of an inconvenience to these extremely

powerful players as they battled a demon
in this particular setting within the

game.

And it was intended to slow these very
powerful players down and make it more

challenging to battle the demon.

However, the corrupted blood feature did
not stay contained within that special

battleground for very strong players.

In fact, it would spread unintentionally
because players infected with the

corrupted blood would leave the
battleground and then expose themselves

players that were less powerful. And
those players were extremely susceptible

the corrupted blood and then would die.

This corrupted blood episode was
essentially a digital pandemic, and it

the players by surprise.

At the time, the more than 5 million
World of Warcraft players around the

were rocked by the corrupted blood virus
raging through the game as it began

killing off their characters.

But curiously...

Scientists noted that there were eerie
similarities between this digital

pandemic and the real outbreak.

When you were infected with this virus,
you had to stay away from the other

players. You had to socially distance or
else the other player will get

infected.

And there are many different types of
players. Some have a lot of points.

Some didn't have a lot of points.

And when you had the virus, your life
force will deplete.

So, of course, the individuals that
don't have enough coins were the first

pass away, while individuals who
collected more coins or coins, they

do better.

And no matter what happened in this
game, it seemed like the virus kept on

spreading.

In fact, animals could even get infected
in the game.

The corrupted blood pandemic lasted for
nearly a month.

before the World of Warcraft designers
retooled the virus to stop its spread.

A virtual vaccine, if you will.

But that was not the end of the story.

Because in September of 2007, scientists
from Tufts University published a

research paper which suggested that
virtual games like World of Warcraft

untapped resource in the study of
pandemics.

The unique thing about the World of
Warcraft simulation is that it was a

potential new type of opportunity to
understand and maybe even predict the

different ways that human behavior might
influence the spread of a pandemic.

So, for example, during the outbreak,
the developers imposed a quarantine to

to get players to stay within those
particular areas to help slow the spread

the corrupted blood feature, but they
ignored it.

I think the take -home message is that
What once was just a video game or

entertainment turned out to be something
that maybe can be studied.

And that was interesting. It wasn't just
the game itself, but how the players

reacted to the virus.

How people thought during a pandemic.

What did they do?

In the years since the corrupted blood
incident, the use of computer

to help fight real pandemics.

has evolved these sophisticated digital
tools are now referred to as

mathematical models the model is really
just trying to

predict the future using specific
assumptions about where the disease

might be going in terms of the outbreak
so you take what's known as best you can

and look at various scenarios and
numbers, and you throw that into some

a formula, and it can give you some
sense of where the outbreak is going.

Mathematical models can be used to help
predict things like how fast a virus

will spread, how many individuals will
be affected.

How efficacious these different sorts of
methods of slowing the spread might be,

whether it's a quarantine or just
limiting certain types of services.

How much hospital capacity will be
needed in these different scenarios.

Those are all things that models can
help public health officials gauge.

At their best, mathematical models can
only offer theories as to what might

happen as a pandemic spreads across the
world.

But could a viral threat emerge for
which no data exists at all?

How do we prepare for a virus that's not
of this Earth?

July 24th, 1969.

900 miles southwest of Hawaii in the
Pacific Ocean.

Four days after achieving their historic
moon landing.

the Apollo 11 astronauts splash down
inside their space capsule and are

recovered by the U .S. Navy.

But instead of being allowed to
immediately reunite with their

families to celebrate,

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael
Collins are placed in a strict two

-week quarantine.

The reason?

NASA's fears that the men might possibly
have contracted a lunar virus.

and brought it back to Earth.

These were the first time astronauts
were actually going to another planetary

body, staying there, and then coming
back.

It's absolutely feasible that a
biological contaminant of some kind

back with astronauts.

They quarantined the astronauts from
that first mission, and they also

back moon rocks and tried grinding them
up, extracting them, feeding them to

every type of life that they could think
of to see if there were any ill

effects.

In the end, concerns that the Apollo 11
astronauts brought back any kind of

lunar infection thankfully turned out to
be a false alarm.

But why would NASA worry that bacteria
and viruses might exist in the freezing

vacuum of space in the first place?

The answer lies in the controversial
theory of panspermia, which suggests

microbial life, including potential
viruses, can be found throughout the

including on moons, asteroids, comets,
and alien planets.

Panspermia is essentially derived from
Greek roots, pans meaning everywhere,

spermata meaning seed.

So panspermia essentially means seeds of
life everywhere.

The concept is that life seeds are
distributed widely across the entire

universe.

And whenever conditions are correct, are
appropriate, on a planet safe like the

Earth, then life is deposited and life
gets started.

According to the theory of panspermia,
space microbes trapped in meteors and

comets regularly rain down on Earth.

We have some hundred tons of cometary
debris.

coming into the Earth's atmosphere all
the time.

So I think there had to be a continuing
influx of bacteria and

also viruses and major epidemics
throughout history have started suddenly

and disappeared equally suddenly.

And I think the most reasonable
explanation is that bacteria, viruses,

and maybe even other organisms could
have been introduced from outside and

caused these huge pandemics of disease.

The idea that pandemics could come to
Earth from space is a fascinating and

chilling theory.

However, the much more sobering reality

is that the grave threat of deadly
global infections is alive and well.

A fact driven home by COVID -19.

Summer 2020.

Every nation had to face an indisputable
fact.

The virus was everywhere.

And the death toll was mounting.

Doctors, scientists, and political
leaders focused on one critical goal,

developing a vaccine to combat COVID
-19.

There are multiple challenges to
developing vaccines.

The most basic is identifying the
appropriate antigen or protein to use

actually will be protective.

And if you think about it, it took us 50
years to get an Ebola vaccine.

We still don't have a vaccine for HIV.

So this can take a long time.

But we were very fortunate now that we
identified the right virus.

We knew it was part of the coronavirus
family. It was new, hence the word

But we knew what we wanted to fight
against, which was the spike protein.

Once we knew that, the science kicked
in.

On December 11, 2020.

The world breathed a collective sigh of
relief when the U .S. Food and Drug

Administration approved the first
coronavirus vaccine.

This breakthrough was quickly followed
by additional approved vaccines, and

for the future began to emerge as
hundreds of millions were immunized

globe.

Actually, when you have such a
concentrated effort and funding,

It's amazing to watch how quickly we've
developed new vaccines for this brand

new disease.

That's really incredible, having that
will and the money to do it and the

scientific basis.

If I had one wish from this pandemic, it
would be that everyone, including

myself, we learn from our mistakes.

And of course, we always need to work
together and not be divided.

Because if we don't communicate, we'll
never get the input of all the

individuals, whether it be the doctor
who travels to Alaska, whether it be the

epidemiologist who plays a video game.

Everyone's opinion counts.

So hopefully we'll continue to
communicate and we'll be in this and

whatever happens together.

If recent events have taught us
anything, It's that the threat of deadly

pandemics may never be eliminated.

So, here are the questions that remain.

How will the next one arrive?

Is it possible that we can prevent it
before it happens?

And if not, will we be ready to contain
it?

Some of these answers will only come
with time, while the others could remain

hidden in America's book of secrets.