Ebola in Africa. Hantavirus on a cruise ship. A measles outbreak kills 560 children in Bangladesh, sickens 60,000. Major diseases are making the news.

We ask ourselves, is this the next big one? Maybe. We are certainly doing everything possible to make ourselves vulnerable.

President Donald Trump pulled us out of the World Health Organization.They are the source of the most valuable information. Who is spreading what and how? He also canceled billions of dollars in research grants to universities. Anything we might have been ahead of we are behind now. Hundreds of scientists have left the country to continue their research in more welcoming places.

Without Universal Health Care we have no way to effectively monitor the health of our population. The most vulnerable people are doing the dirtiest work and have the least health care.

What will the next Big Epidemic be like? It has to spread easily between people. It will mutate quickly defying our ability to make drugs against it or treatments for it. Laurie Garrett wrote a really great book about this “The Coming Plague” In the preface she talks of our growing vulnerability. “A person harboring a life-threatening microbe can easily board a jet plane and be on another continent when the symptoms of illness strike. The jet plane itself or its cargo can carry insects bringing infectious agents into a new ecologic setting.”

West Nile virus took the introduction of a mosquito that preyed on birds and people both to make the disease jump species. The first human case on the North American continent was in 1999.

Ebola is unlikely to be the “BIG ONE.” It spreads through bodily fluids like sweat, saliva, blood etc. It can also be spread on clothing. People have to actually touch each other or something infected to catch it.

The Hantavirus will also probably not be the “BIG ONE”. It also requires close sustained contact with an infected person. It mutates very slowly.

Bird flu is a very likely candidate because it mutates fast and jumps species easily. It can be spread through the air.

New diseases are turning up all the time because we are intruding on natural areas and displacing wildlife. The wet market all across China and Indonesia is a point of vulnerability. People there want to see that what they are cooking is healthy so they want to see the animal alive. Having a lot of live wild caught animals in cages together with wild bats pooping all over is just asking for trouble.

The factory farm is also a disease factory. Animals are kept in overcrowded conditions and fed antibiotics to keep them healthy and gain more weight. Antibiotic resistant diseases are being bred there accidentally. The people who work on those farms are often undocumented so they have no insurance and don’t call in sick for just a cold or the flu.

There is an outbreak of Bird flu among dairy cows that has spread to the humans who care for them. How long before a pneumonic form escapes into the general population? Ironically if cows and people have a healthy environment they are much less likely to develop new diseases, so a cow that goes outside to graze and the worker who has health care make for a better system. We have allowed corporations to create an unhealthy food system. Feed lots can fatten cows effectively only by huge subsidies to the grain growers. If we were not subsidizing corn so heavily it would be less expensive to raise a cow on grass than on corn.

War is another great disease generator. Crowds of people displaced, living together without enough food or clean water. It’s a perfect incubator for new diseases to enter the social fabric.

Travel bans are ineffective. By the time a ban is instituted the disease has already spread beyond borders.The best way to keep ourselves healthy is to keep everyone else healthy.

The strange thing is Jesus told us how to handle this. He said, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.”

If everyone has clean water diseases like cholera do not spread. If everyone has clean water they can wash their hands many times a day and that helps slow the spread of disease. We have the technology to pull water out of desert air. We just have to choose to make those machines instead of fighter planes and bombs.

If everyone has health care no matter what their status we would be able to monitor the health of farm workers. We would be containing things before they get out of hand in a vulnerable population. What happens to the least of us can happen to all of us.

Marie Tomlinson is a Fredonia resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com