Perhaps, in the totality of things, pandemics are natures way of stopping the human population from increasing at too fast a rate. Our descendants may think that the medical advances that have been made in the last 200 years were not the Godsend that we think they are when they contemplate the extent of the famine which will inevitably happen.

“…is a nation that cannot secure its borders against the immigration of ‘illegals’ be they human or microbial, not a nation at all?”

We can’t entirely secure our borders against microbial invaders, but we can and are doing an array of things to reduce the risks. So yes, Australia certainly is a nation in this sense.

Maybe more pertinent questions are;

Would Australia be a better nation if it had much more rigorous safeguards against microbial invasion and spread, regardless of the disadvantages placed upon immigrants, tourists and residents?

Would we be a better nation if we were much better prepared to become isolationist in the event of a threat, or to cordon off an airport or city or region if need be?

Thank you Professor Curson. I am occasionally intrigued with the trend by varying authors to refer to the “them and us” situation whereby we appear only concerned with what is coming into the country and tend to ignore what we are brewing for ourselves, or what we are potentially exporting.

Animal diseases especially are a continuing threat to public health. Complex and yet unknown sets of risk factors will no doubt lead to the introduction of new infections into the human population and we do not know which disease will emerge next.

The swine bird/pig/human hybrid flu is the most current zoonotic pathogen to infiltrate borders, afflicting some 10,000 humans to date.

In the last 20 or 25 years, approximately 75 percent of the new human diseases that have emerged are zoonotic.

One factor, industrialised farming, leads to crowding of poultry, pigs, and cattle. This increases the risk of fast and efficient transmission of infectious agents. Barely a month passes in recent times when we in Australia, with our reputation for “excellent” animal husbandry, witness photographs of crowded battery hen or pig farms.

One has witnessed incarcerated pigs standing in excrement, crammed in like sardines, some balancing on top of others and reduced to cannibalism. Recently the media reported on a pig farm where the animals were infested with maggots.

The massive use of antimicrobials for growth production in this country will see the emergence of additional resistant strains of pathogens. Antibiotics are barely keeping these intensively farmed animals alive until we eat them - unwittingly, while many succumb to a premature but welcoming death.

Australia packs 100,000 animals on a single ship to sail the high seas for some three weeks. These animals are also crammed in like sardines and up to 40,000 infectious animals p/a are dumped overboard. Given the incubation period of some zoonoses, one need also ask what Australia is potentially “gifting” to our trading partners whose quarantine/inspection practices are governed by the obligatory bribe?

Will microbial border invaders just simply add to the hazardous microbial soup we are brewing for ourselves?