Ronald Bailey Argues That the Ebola Outbreak Is Not a 'Dress Rehearsal' for the Next Big One
Don't panic. The current Ebola outbreak is not a "dress rehearsal" for the next big epidemic. While it is true that Ebola may be "just a plane ride away," it is highly unlikely to become an epidemic threat in the United States and other rich countries. Furthermore, rapid advances in fields like genomics, proteomics, reverse vaccinology, synthetic biotechnology, and bioinformatics are exponentially improving the knowledge of researchers about how pathogens and the human immune system interact. All this biomedical progress is making it ever easier to diagnose and treat new infectious diseases. As result, Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey argues that the age of epidemics will soon likely come to its end.