Raina MacIntyre

The thing that I think might make it more difficult than when COVID hit is that the COVID pandemic itself has

has created a huge pushback against public health in general, vaccines specifically, and there is a massive amount of misinformation and disinformation about epidemics, about vaccines.

There was even social media reports going around saying the Pfizer COVID vaccine causes Hantavirus.

There's going to be a lot of pushback and a lot of difficulty getting basic public health measures enacted if it has to be done in a population-wide setting.

Things like social distancing, mask mandates.

There's kind of an emotional, visceral reaction to masks in most people.

I mean, I still wear one when I go to the shops, when I get in an elevator.

I take a lot of precautions still because I know a lot about COVID and that it's still around and it's actually a really dangerous disease.

virus so I think that's a huge barrier for us to overcome and the disinformation it is instantaneous and global you know we are being affected by misinformation and disinformation at a unprecedented rate and I don't think governments anywhere are equipped to deal with that you know the stage is kind of full of misinformation I think that's going to be the biggest barrier when the next pandemic hits.

Yeah, I mean, I think the big contenders are influenza and potentially mpox clade 1, which is showing more adaptation to human transmission.

And it's causing big epidemics in countries like Democratic Republic of Congo, where, you know, the majority of cases are actually happening in children.

So it's not being sexually transmitted.

It looks like it's

person-to-person transmission.

Those are the two big ones, I think, of what's around at the moment.

But you never know.

Like COVID itself came completely left of field when we were preparing for an influenza pandemic.

I'm Raina McIntyre.

I'm Professor of Global Biosecurity at the Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales, Australia.

I study infectious diseases, particularly emerging infectious diseases, vaccine preventable diseases and issues around biosecurity, pandemic preparedness.