The First Ten |
Pandemics do not begin with sirens or headlines. They begin with a cough that goes unreported, a fever mistaken for exhaustion, a worker who does not stay home because staying home costs money. The real danger of a future bird flu outbreak lies not in its known lethality, but in how quietly it could establish itself before authorities realise what they are dealing with. Recent scientific modelling by Indian researchers Philip Cherian and Gautam Menon of Ashoka University offers a sobering lesson: when it comes to zoonotic diseases like bird flu; timing matters more than scale.
The difference between two detected human infections and ten is not incremental; it is decisive. Below a certain threshold, outbreaks are containable with focused interventions. Cross that line, and the disease behaves as if no early action was taken at all. This finding should reshape how India thinks about epidemic preparedness. Our public health reflex........