Table Of ContentThe Nature of Pandemics
The ongoing COVID-19 disaster—and the universal realization of the unceasing threat
of even worse pandemics in the future—has resulted in a wealth of books, scientific
papers, and journalistic analyses on the politics, medicine, and human tragedy of recent
events. The Nature of Pandemics is not an outcrop of COVID-19 publication frenzy. It
was conceived in the period between the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and
Ebola pandemics, intended to address the critical but commonly overlooked issues that
limit our readiness, immediate recognition, and rapid response to pandemic outbreaks.
The book is the first to look holistically at the nature of pandemics as a phenomenon
and the challenges of mounting an organized, concerted global response to a worldwide
lethal bioevent. While the majority of healthcare professionals at national and
international levels recognize the danger, the establishment of consistent and effective
countermeasures in the form of a global anti-pandemic network is, at best, still sporadic
and inconsistent. The need to react quickly and to unhesitatingly mobilize all needed
resources—rather than embark on a slow, deliberative, and politically safe approach—is
probably the paramount obstacle to the effective containment of a pandemic disease.
Chapters are written by internationally known and widely respected experts from
the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, Israel, Scandinavia, and South America. They
represent a cross-section of professions, many with academic and medical prominence
supported by their direct involvement at the very forefront of the war against pandemic
outbreaks, several knowing the personal and operational challenges involved with
counter-pandemic responses. All involved are active in their respective fields and offer
practical, real-world expertise based on hands-on work at the “front lines,” providing
profound, firsthand knowledge and recommendations for best practices. The opinions,
often highly personal and perhaps even controversial, are based as much on theoretical
considerations as on their extensive personal and highly insightful experience.
As such, The Nature of Pandemics offers a multifaceted insight into problems that,
if ignored initially, come to mar all subsequent response and mitigation efforts. The
approach is rigorously intellectual and, in a field that often evokes passions, is equally
rigorously dispassionate. It has to be so: in the modern world of pandemics, “past is
the prologue.” Coverage provides solutions in developing readiness and mobilizing
response to the current pandemic and future ones. Addressing, military and security
issues, government roadblocks to response, mutual aid agreements, ethics, global
health organizations and response agencies—and the harsh realities of potential mass
fatalities—the book examines the myriad complexities of pandemics and the real threat
outbreaks.
The Nature of Pandemics
Edited by
Dag K.J.E. von Lubitz
and Candace J. Gibson
First edition published 2023
by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487–2742
and by CRC Press
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Dag K.J.E von Lubitz and Candace J. Gibson; individual chapters,
the contributors
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Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data
Names: Von Lubitz, Dag K. J. E., editor. | Gibson, Candace, editor.
Title: The nature of pandemics / edited by Dag K.J.E. von Lubitz, and
Candace Gibson.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022013147 (print) | LCCN 2022013148 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138048300 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032340609 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781315170220 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Pandemics—History. | Communicable diseases—History. |
World health—Diseases—History. | Epidemiology—Political aspects.
Classification: LCC RA649 .N38 2023 (print) | LCC RA649 (ebook) |
DDC 614.4—dc23/eng/20211013
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013147
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013148
ISBN: 978-1-138-04830-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-34060-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-17022-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781315170220
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Foreword ix
Preface xi
Editors xxi
Contributors xxiii
Section i eMeRGinG inFectioUS DiSeASeS
Chapter 1 Politics, Economics, and Egos: When Agendas
Conflict—A West African Case Study 3
John Jordan
Chapter 2 The Socioeconomic and Security Challenges in
Responding to Medical Emergencies—Pandemics
or Disasters—in Post-Conflict Society: The Liberian
Ebola and COVID-19 Pandemic Experiences 19
Saint Jerome Larbelee
Chapter 3 Pandemics: Nature of an Emerging Global Threat:
Preparedness in the African Context 55
Doudou Fall
Chapter 4 Predicting Mosquito-Borne Epidemics in Latin America 77
Jaime R. Torres
Section ii PReVention oF FUtURe PAnDeMicS
Chapter 5 The PREDICT Project: A Transdisciplinary Case Study
in Partnerships for Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness 89
David J. Wolking and Jonna A.K. Mazet
Section iii MAnAGinG PAnDeMicS/DiSASteRS
Chapter 6 An Administrator’s Nightmare 117
Steven D. Berkshire and Asa B. Wilson
v
vi Contents
Chapter 7 The Cascading Impact of Infectious Diseases
on the Healthcare System 127
Amesh A. Adalja
Chapter 8 Supply Chain Infrastructure in Global Health Systems:
A Strategic Asset for Pandemic Preparedness 137
Anne Snowdon and Alexandra Wright
Section iV coMMUnicAtionS
Chapter 9 Emerging Infectious Disease Communication Strategies
of Health Organizations: An Internal and External View 165
Anat Gesser‑Edelsburg
Chapter 10 From Woe to Go: Understanding Rumours and their
Role in Preparedness and Readiness for Pandemics 195
Judith Molka‑Danielsen and Susan Balandin
Chapter 11 An Exploration of the Lived Experience of African
Journalists during the 2014 Ebola Crisis 211
Anne Edimo, Blanche Morel, and David M. Secko
Section V inFoRMAtion tecHnoLoGY
Chapter 12 Coordination of Global Efforts in Combatting Infectious
Disease 239
Danny Sheath, Nefti Eboni Bempong, and Antoine Flahault
Chapter 13 Health Information Technology and Infectious Disease:
Learning from the Past 259
Stephanie H. Hoelscher and Dwayne Hoelscher
Chapter 14 The Meaning of the Italian Fight against COVID-19:
Protecting Fragile People and Defending the Social
Values of Universal Public Health and Voluntary
Activities through National Digital Solutions 291
Francesco Gabbrielli and Luigi Bertinato
Chapter 15 Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to Fight
Effectively against Pandemics 311
Simon Richir, Abdelmajid Kadri, and
Nicolas Ribeyre
Section Vi SecURitY, PoLicinG, AnD tHe LAW
Chapter 16 Biosecurity and the Police 351
John P. Sullivan
Contents vii
Chapter 17 The Impact of Pandemics on National and International
Security 365
Stephen G. Waller
Chapter 18 Quarantine: A Brief History of Infectious Pandemic
Diseases in Canada 381
Candace J. Gibson
Section Vii FinAL tHoUGHtS: tHe neXt PAnDeMic
Chapter 19 Collaborative Decision Making in Crises: The
Malphas Affair 405
Dag K.J.E. von Lubitz
Appendix 429
Index 433
Foreword
The book you now hold in your hands is not about COVID-19. Many have been already
written and even more will be written. This is the book about the nature of pandemics,
about their common denominators to which only scant attention is paid despite the fact
that these are the factors which are the principal cause of societal devastation that pan-
demics generate. The editors reached out to leading international experts in pandemic
management who present and discuss a series of critical multifocal lessons learned
from the worldwide frontlines of counter pandemic operations. What the authors of
individual chapters highlight and propose to prevent – unpreparedness and lack of
readiness - has occurred in real time on numerous occasions. The last, the COVID-19
pandemic, provided some of the most painful lessons worldwide.
The healthcare workers on the ground fighting this illness have performed superbly.
But the leadership, medical and political, failed miserably to apply the lessons learned
from past pandemics. As Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out “People only see what they
are prepared to see!” We knew there are five principal causes of failure in any major
disaster:
1 Failure to learn from history.
2 Failure of imagination.
3 Tendency to “fight the last war”.
4 An underestimation of the threat.
5 Belief the threat will never materialize with the subsequent procrastination to
follow.
We, as a nation and a world, lived every one of these in stark denial of the history
lesson.
In the early 1950s the only method for disease prevention on a large scale was
hand- and surface washing to mitigate surface contamination and spread. That dictum
proposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worked well for a long
time. We knew something far worse lurked around the corner: TB, smallpox, measles,
and the corona virus family were all transmitted principally as aerosols allowing patho-
gens to enter their hosts via respiratory routes. Yet COVID-19, a coronavirus, was not
considered to be spread by the airborne route by the CDC medical community until a
full two years into the COVID-19 pandemic. The ignorance and neglect of what has
either been known or could be readily anticipated proved to be extremely costly in lives
lost, massive economic consequences, and unprecedented destabilization of the globe.
Contributing to this, of course, was the uncertainty or even reluctance to accept
anything that was either known or suspected at the beginning of the pandemic – the
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