{"id":79656,"date":"2018-06-16T02:22:23","date_gmt":"2018-06-16T09:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/the-next-plague-is-coming-is-america-ready"},"modified":"2018-06-21T00:07:01","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T07:07:01","slug":"the-next-plague-is-coming-is-america-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/the-next-plague-is-coming-is-america-ready","title":{"rendered":"The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BRKSGMZ93IY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Yet even the U.S. is disturbingly vulnerable\u2014and in some respects is becoming quickly more so. It depends on a just-in-time medical economy, in which stockpiles are limited and even key items are made to order. Most of the intravenous bags used in the country are manufactured in Puerto Rico, so when Hurricane Maria devastated the island last September, the bags fell in short supply. Some hospitals were forced to inject saline with syringes\u2014and so syringe supplies started runn\u2026ing low too. The most common lifesaving drugs all depend on long supply chains that include India and China\u2014chains that would likely break in a severe pandemic. \u201cEach year, the system gets leaner and leaner,\u201d says Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t take much of a hiccup anymore to challenge it.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>The epidemics of the early 21st century revealed a world unprepared, even as the risks continue to multiply. Much worse is coming.<\/p>\n<p>Image above: Workers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center\u2019s biocontainment unit practicing safe procedure on a mannequin.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2018\/07\/when-the-next-plague-hits\/561734\/\">https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2018\/07\/when-th...ts\/561734\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yet even the U.S. is disturbingly vulnerable\u2014and in some respects is becoming quickly more so. It depends on a just-in-time medical economy, in which stockpiles are limited and even key items are made to order. Most of the intravenous bags used in the country are manufactured in Puerto Rico, so when Hurricane Maria devastated the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,39,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-economics","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79803,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79656\/revisions\/79803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}