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.
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.
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.
The world can now maintain an acute infection in a way that is unprecedented in the history of life on our planet.
