Free Republic

A study published by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in July, and reportedly circulating widely on Chinese social media this week, concluded that as many as 20 species of coronavirus are “highly likely” to cause an outbreak among humans. The study appeared in Emerging Microbes & Infections in July, the South China Morning Post noted on Sunday, but it began making headlines in Chinese-language media as social media users discovered it and began spreading its conclusions online.

The next major pandemic is coming. It’s already on the horizon, and could be far worse — killing millions more people — than the last one. We don’t yet know for certain what form it will take — just that its arrival, according to global health experts, is not just a possibility but a probability. To combat Disease X — as the World Health Organisation ominously calls it — we will once again need vaccines to be engineered and delivered in record time. But, as things stand, there is absolutely no guarantee that will happen. By contrast, we may well...