Dec. 14, 2020 9 a.m.
Illustration by John Opet
Princeton disease ecologist C. Jessica Metcalf and Harvard physician and epidemiologist Michael Mina say that predicting disease could become as commonplace as predicting the weather. The Global Immunological Observatory, like a weather center forecasting a tornado or hurricane, would alert the world, earlier than ever before, to dangerous emerging pathogens like SARS-CoV-2.
In late October 1859, one of the century’s most devastating storms struck the British Isles. Winds, estimated at over 100 mph, howled across the Irish Sea. The storm destroyed 133 ships and caused at least 800 deaths, more than half on the Royal Charter, a steam clipper built to handle the increased gold rush traffic to Australia.