New York Times
By: Michael Osterholm
May 9, 2013
THERE has been a flurry of recent attention over two novel infectious agents: the first, a strain of avian influenza virus (H7N9) in China that is causing severe respiratory disease
and other serious health complications in people; the second, a
coronavirus, first reported last year in the Middle East, that has
brought a crop of new infections. While the number of human cases from
these two pathogens has so far been limited, the death rates for each
are notably high.
Alarmingly, we face a third, and far more widespread, ailment that has
gotten little attention: call it “contagion exhaustion.” News reports on
a seemingly unending string of frightening microbes — bird flu,
flesh-eating strep, SARS, AIDS, Ebola, drug-resistant bugs in hospitals, the list goes on — have led some people to ho-hum the latest reports.
Some seem to think that public health officials pull a microbe “crisis
du jour” out of their proverbial test tube when financing for infectious
disease research and control programs appears to be drying up. They
dismiss warnings about the latest bugs as “crying wolf.” This
misimpression could be deadly.
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