I’m not terribly willing to treat them as an “existential” risk, since countless pandemics already happened and for natural reasons they never actually kill the entire population.
Most major pandemics have occurred before modern transport was common. The presence of easy air travel makes a serious pandemic more problematic. And in fact if one looks at emergent diseases in the last sixty years, such as HIV, one sees that they are effectively taking advantage of the ease of transport in the modern world.
HIV emerged before modern medicine developed. It was discovered in 1981 - almost prehistory by medical standards, but it was actually transfered to humans somewhere in late 19th century. It wrecks the most havoc in places which are extremely far from modern medicine as well, in developed countries HIV is a fairly minor problem.
SARS is a much better example of a new disease and how modern medicine can deal with it.
Even in Africa, HIV has taken advantage of modern transport. Migrant workers are a major cause of HIV spread in sub-Saharan Africa. This has advanced to the point where new road building projects think about what they will do to disease transmission. These laborers and the like aren’t just walking- the possibility of such migrant labor is connected to the fact that even in the developing world, buses exist.
Most major pandemics have occurred before modern transport was common. The presence of easy air travel makes a serious pandemic more problematic. And in fact if one looks at emergent diseases in the last sixty years, such as HIV, one sees that they are effectively taking advantage of the ease of transport in the modern world.
HIV emerged before modern medicine developed. It was discovered in 1981 - almost prehistory by medical standards, but it was actually transfered to humans somewhere in late 19th century. It wrecks the most havoc in places which are extremely far from modern medicine as well, in developed countries HIV is a fairly minor problem.
SARS is a much better example of a new disease and how modern medicine can deal with it.
Even in Africa, HIV has taken advantage of modern transport. Migrant workers are a major cause of HIV spread in sub-Saharan Africa. This has advanced to the point where new road building projects think about what they will do to disease transmission. These laborers and the like aren’t just walking- the possibility of such migrant labor is connected to the fact that even in the developing world, buses exist.