The COVID-19 pandemic produced official vows around the world to strengthen the global public health infrastructure. Yet three years after the peak in worldwide COVID-19 deaths, preparedness for the next pandemic remains “fragile,” in the words of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) of the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank. Distracted by geopolitical frictions and lulled by the easing of COVID-19 death rates, political leaders are neglecting the pandemic’s grim lessons. However, new public health threats, possibly even more dangerous than the SARS-CoV-2 virus, already…
