The conventional wisdom is that a crisis like this leads to a panic-neglect cycle, where we oversupply caution for a while, but can’t keep it up. This was the expectation of many people in biosecurity, with the main strategy being about making sure the response wasn’t too narrowly focused on a re-run of Covid, instead covering a wide range of possible pandemics, and that the funding was ring-fenced so that it couldn’t be funnelled away to other issues when the memory of this tragedy began to fade.But we didn’t even see a panic stage: spending on biodefense for future pandemics was disappointingly weak in the UK and even worse in the US.
Have you seen data on spending for future pandemics before COVID and after?
Have you seen data on spending for future pandemics before COVID and after?