Another COVID-19-Like Pandemic May Happen in 60 Years? Researchers Anticipates the Probability

No one is in the clear, except another pandemic in 60 years that some scientists have warned. Viruses and other diseases will not stop but add more frequency as nature seems to point a gun on humans.

They say COVID-19 is just the tip of the iceberg as the worst outbreak in a hundred years or so. The spread of diseases is typical, said Padua University's experts, mapping diseases in the past 400 years to know what comes next. Going over the numbers, they discovered that extreme outbreaks are more common than expected; others will be more likely. It will start in 2080, but how much is known yet.

A similar pandemic to coronavirus is around the corner

Those conceived in the year 2000 have a 38% chance of experiencing one and will have had another by the time they reach 60, reported the Daily Mail.

Researchers didn't detail why the danger is growing but think it's mainly due to the population growth, alterations in food production, destruction of the environment, and more regular human-disease-carrying animal encounters. A chance of another outbreak is only possible, and preparing for the risks is imperative.

Marco Marani, the study's leading researcher, and his colleagues used innovative statistical methods to assess the extent and incidence of disease outbreaks that would not result in illness if we would expect another pandemic in 60 years based on the occurrence of epidemics.

For four centuries, researchers examined plague, smallpox, cholera, typhus, and a variety of novel pathogens.

Frequency of outbreaks

They found substantial variation in the frequency where the epidemics have previously happened and also trends throughout the prevalence of outbreaks.

According to co-author William Pan from Duke University, they anticipated the probability of similar-scale events happening in the future. Epidemics were not so rare would make efforts to avoid and manage them as a greater priority in the foreseeable future.

The Spanish Flu is one of the worst outbreaks in modern times, cited by History, had killed 30 million people from 1918 to 1920. There is a slight chance it will happen next time. In other words, the figures indicate that an outbreak of these proportions is reasonably probable to appear in the next 400 years.

As part of the existing research, researchers examined the increasing rate at which emerging pathogens like SARS-CoV-2 had broken loose in populations over the last fifty years, cited News Medical.

This indicated that the probability of new infectious diseases would almost certainly triple in the upcoming years. They calculate that an outbreak of the scale of Covid-19 is likely to happen in the next 59 years. Researchers evaluated the probability of an epidemic wiping out all human life, predicting that it will strike within 12,000 years.

That's not to say we'll be secure from a Covid-like outbreak for the next 59 years and from a tragedy on the scale of the Spanish flu for the next 300 years, noted Duke article co-author Gabriel Katul. Everyone should expect another pandemic in 60 years if they are correct, but anything can happen, like a manufactured virus.