Editorial — Viruses may be greater enemy than terrorism

SUNDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — Our fragility as a race is being highlighted these days in the face of outbreaks of deadly and crippling viruses.

While terrorism and the weaponry of war take up much of our attention, disease is becoming an increasing threat.

Ebola has killed many hundreds in Africa and has now entered the U.S. In Canada, there has been at least one unconfirmed case. Ebola has been around for a long time, and has successfully been contained in the past but modern travel has facilitated its spread as the virus hitchhikes on airlines from one country to another.

A column by Jack Knox on this website correctly points out that while such diseases are frightening, there are many others — ones we’ve lived with for centuries — that continue to take many more lives than ebola and similar viruses.

Yet ebola has the potential to be the next plague. It can be stopped, but so far this latest outbreak is making frightening gains.

Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent virus called enterovirus D68 has been diagnosed in provinces across the country. While it usually causes only flu-like symptoms, some cases have been reported in B.C. — including one in the Interior Health Authority — that create much more serious illness along with paralytic symptoms.

We’ve had these scares before. It wasn’t long ago that SARS spread across the ocean from China to Canada, sending our health-care system into full control mode. The potentially fatal H1N1, also known as the Swine Flu, caused great concern just a few years ago and is still with us.

Even old viruses like measles have broken out briefly close to home. Any student of B.C. history will know what smallpox can do — in the 1860s it decimated our Aboriginal population. And new theories suggest the Black Death  that killed 1.5 million people in Medieval England was a virus rather than bacteria-caused.

If any one of these new or old viruses was to over-run our health-care system it could threaten the very existence of our civilization.

Alarmist, you say? Authorities urge the public not to panic, and it’s good advice. Hopefully, Ebola can be contained, and the riddle of enterovirus D68 solved, but our war against them and others like them may be an even greater challenge than terrorism.