Such as, say, the bird flu:
Scientists have used bird flu virus samples from Egypt to develop a new basis for a vaccine against the toxic H5N1 strain that continues to circulate, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.
It’s worth considering that these proto-endemics, while they generate a lot of hype, for better or for worse, at their outset, also tend to stick with us as more-or-less regular, run-of-the-mill diseases.
In 80 years or so, will we regard the bird flu and swine flu outbreaks as we bemusedly consider the parrot flu story today? Maybe, but I feel better knowing that the WHO is around to have taken the right precautionary measures, even if that means “over-preparing.”
(image from flickr user Chewy Chua under a Creative Commons license)