Disease X, and Future Pandemic Threats.

At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos Switzerland this past week, leaders were discussing what to do about Disease X. This wasn’t about what the heck has happened to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Rather, the Disease X being discussed at the WEF refers to the big unknown disease that’s been on the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Blueprint list since 2018. This Blueprint list includes known baddies—such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Lassa fever, Zika and, of course, Covid-19—that the WHO believes should be international priorities for more research and development to tackle. But as the saying goes, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know. The biggest and most worrisome threat in the coming years may be a yet-to-be-identified disease. That’s where Disease X marks the spot. It represents the next unknown pathogen that will wreak havoc sometime in the near future. And the operative word here is “will” and not “may.”