What is this meeting to prepare for “Disease X”?

As the World Economic Forum opens this Monday in Davos, it needs no more than a cryptic letter to stir the imagination. In two days, on Wednesday, a meeting is planned there to discuss “Preparation for Disease X”. “The Crazy Round Table”, Alarm Viral Posts Continue

This is not the first time that Disease X has rocked the anti-vaccine and conspiracy field. In June, a viral video on TikTok speculated that Disease X may have been “discovered by WHO in 2018” to plan the next pandemic. Nothing like that really. Since 2018, disease X has been included in the list of priority diseases and pathogens for research and development established by the World Health Organization. For example, this list also includes Ebola virus, Zika virus or Covid-19.

“The world should be better prepared”

“Each of these diseases was an X disease in its day,” they wrote in a scientific journal editorial Science In 2021, epidemiologists and WHO officials Maria van Kerkhove, Michael Ryan as well as the organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Future emergence risk is driven by multiple factors, including climate change, ecosystem change, and increasing urbanization. The next disease X could appear at any time, and the world needs to be better prepared. »

With this list, it’s all about prioritizing research. But it “does not indicate possible causes of future epidemics”, the WHO website states. Between 631,000 and 827,000 unknown viruses have the potential to infect humans, shows a presentation on WHO’s Disease X and the Unknown Challenge of 2022. For WHO researchers, this pathogen anthropogenic land degradation.

A master WHO file

The disease could cause a potential pandemic “between 20 and twenty times more deaths than Covid-19,” noted the event description on the World Economic Forum’s website. World Health Organization Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and AstraZeneca’s Board of Directors Chairman, Michel Demare, are participating in the conference.

Preparing for future pandemics is a key issue that WHO is working on, so it is more logical to see the meeting on the agenda for Davos. Beginning in 2024, WHO is also working to develop a scientific framework for pandemics and pandemic preparedness, with a cycle of consultations planned until February.

E.J.