Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: An infectious disease threat anywhere can become a threat everywhere. In today’s interconnected world, a pathogen can travel around the globe to major cities in as few as 24 hours. Infectious diseases have killed more humans than war and conflict. Before its eradication, smallpox killed at least 300,000,000 people in the 20th century. Mosquito-borne illnesses are responsible for 50 percent more human deaths each year than deaths caused by other humans, including war and civil violence.
The influenza pandemic of 1918–19 caused the deaths of 3 times as many people as all of those killed in World War I. Population growth has brought people closer to one another and closer to animals, which has increased the opportunities for pathogens to be transmitted between animals and humans. Human health is intimately connected to animal and environmental health at the national and international levels. Zoonotic diseases are responsible for— approximately 60 percent of all human infections; approximately 75 percent of recently emerging infectious diseases affecting humans; and more than 80 percent of biological agents that could be intentionally released as biological weapons.
Environmental change has made it easy for disease vectors, such as mosquitoes, to cover more territory. There are many recent examples of new, reemerging, and zoonotic pathogens quickly spreading across the globe, including— Ebola virus disease, which killed more than 11,000 people and infected more than 28,000 people in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, and which has infected and killed an unknown number of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2018; novel coronavirus disease (COVID), which, as of February 12, 2020, had infected at least 45,000 people in at least 25 countries, resulting in more than 1,100 deaths in China; yellow fever virus; cholera; avian influenza virus (H7N9); novel Middle East Respiratory Syndrome
(MERS)coronavirus; and Zika virus. The costs of new, reemerging, and zoonotic infections are high in human and financial terms. For example— the anthrax attacks in the eastern United States in late 2001 infected 22 people, killed 5, and cost more than $1,000,000,000 to clean up; an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome
(SARS)originating in southern China in late 2002 infected more than 8,000 people, resulted in 774 deaths, and had an economic impact estimated at $30,000,000,000 in only a few months; the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 284,000 people in a single year; and human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV)spread silently for decades before detection, has led to the death of 35,000,000 people, and currently affects 37,000,000 people who are living with the virus. The enormous costs of pandemics can be averted with strategic investment in capacity building and preparedness. The Global Health Security Agenda, which was launched in February 2014 in partnership with countries from around the world, is designed— to measurably address global vulnerability to infectious diseases; to strengthen systems; and to ensure that a trained workforce has the tools needed to prevent, detect, and respond rapidly and effectively to infectious disease threats. Stopping an outbreak at its source, whether naturally occurring, deliberate, or accidental, requires close collaboration among the health, animal, agriculture, defense, security, development, commercial, and other sectors.