This is the proposal of two American biologists: vaccinating the animal reservoirs of potential pandemic viruses with drugs capable of spreading autonomously in populations, we could defeat the next pandemic virus even before it appears
(photo: JEAN- PHILIPPE KSIAZEK / AFP via Getty Images) Ebola, Nipah,
Covid-19, dengue, Sars and Mers, just to name a few. Unfortunately, the list is long, the risks are concrete: we have known for years that zoonoses, the diseases transmitted to humans by animals,
are one of the greatest dangers threatening global health. Also due to the rapid changes that we are imposing on the ecosystems of the planet, which multiply the opportunities for contact between humans and wild animals, and therefore the transmission of new, potentially catastrophic diseases. The results are there for all to see, in a phase in which we are still struggling to get out of the pandemic caused by Sars-Cov-2, a bat virus, passed through pangolins (
it is still the most probable hypothesis) and then who knows for what other species before evolving into a form capable of infecting us too. Despite years of warnings, warnings and anathemas, science has so far done little against these invisible and deadly enemies. So much so that the demand for a change of strategy is starting to get stronger, a proactive approach that leads us to defuse the danger before the next, dramatic, pandemic. How to do? One of the most obvious options is to use vaccines. Not to immunize human beings, however, but the animals that represent the reservoir, the reservoir of new, potential, pandemic viruses. A difficult hypothesis to put into practice, unless resorting to self-diffusing vaccines (or rather self-disseminating), a technologically possible option, but still never used on a large scale.
