Global threats to the US, Pandemics, insects, etc.

http://needtoknow.nas.edu/id/threats/global-killers/

The recent and current pandemic of the Covid19 virus has led to some speculation that this was a deliberate attack on the US.

I think it was more the result of sloppy disease containment in the Wuhan labs and subsequent silence and inaction in the critical potential containment period.

Looking at the list of threats that have either initiated or spun up and re-emerged from Asia and Africa and threatened our shores might give some perspective.

Trying to put these in some sort of order.

As the US became the technology leader of the world, they began eradicating some diseases. Malaria was eradicated in order to dig the Panama Canal, through the liberal use of DDT to kill the Mosquito vectors.

Then TB, Polio and Smallpox were pretty much eliminated in the US, through testing in the case of TB, and vaccines in the case of Polio and Smallpox.

Then as "globalism" exploded onto the scene, mass movements of people and goods between the continents removed the protections previously afforded us by the oceans.

Insect and animal invaders:
African Killer bees, Asian jumping carp, zebra mussels, Asian murder hornets, fire ants, crazy ants, non-native sparrows, squirrels.

The mosquito diseases that had been largely eradicated through the use of insecticides like DDT to knock down mosquito populations, began to re-emerge:
Malaria, Dengue, West Nile virus, Chikungunya, Yellow fever, Filariasis, Tularemia, Dirofilariasis, Japanese encephalitis, Saint Louis encephalitis, Western equine encephalitis, Eastern equine encephalitis, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Ross River fever, Barmah Forest fever, La Crosse encephalitis, and Zika fever, as well as newly detected Keystone virus and Rift Valley fever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito-borne_disease

And more recently Avian flu SARS, Covid19, several strains of Ebola have threatened us.

And diseases that threaten the food chain as well as people, like the Asian Avian flu H5N1 and H7N9 ,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_influenza

and the African swine flu (ASF), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_swine_fever_virus
The recent Pig Ebola
https://mercyforanimals.org/pig-ebol...sease-outbreak

"Since last August, around 22 percent of pigs in China have either died from the disease or been killed to stop its spread. Although the worst outbreak is in China, the disease has spread in varying degrees to Vietnam, Cambodia, Mongolia, and Russia.

China is home to around 440 million pigs (half the world’s pig population), and already 1.2 million pigs have been killed to stop the disease, with no end in sight. Vietnam has killed 2 million of its 30 million pigs, while tourists from Europe have spread the disease to wild boars in Poland and Romania. Dirk Pfeiffer, a veterinary epidemiologist at City University of Hong Kong and an expert on African swine fever, stated:
This is the biggest animal disease outbreak we’ve ever had on the planet. It makes the foot and mouth disease and BSE [mad cow disease] outbreaks pale in comparison to the damage that is being done.

and of course Mad cow, BSE (Bovine Spongiform encephalitis)

Thinking a little about it all, it seems like many of these diseases arose from hyper-dense populations kept in too close an environment. Vast dense populations of chickens, pigs, bats, people, simply generate new diseases on a regular basis.
These densities need to be reduced I think, so we are not faced with a new annual pandemic.

But it is also awesome in the true sense of the word, to reflect back at how many global threats have emerged in the last 100 years. A breathtaking display of the forces of evolution, and random DNA recombinations.

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Global threats to the US, Pandemics, insects, etc.