Pandemic

What are the risks of a Worldwide Pandemic actually happening?

On a Richter scale of one to one hundred how high is the risk of a pandemic sweeping the World in the twenty first century? In a word huge, life on earth has fast evolved but within the confines of a one dimensional direction and due to our desire for ever greater material fulfilment. Mega cities housing millions, transport systems designed to get people to their places of work as efficiently as possible and towering office blocks within which thousands work are now the norm. Many come into vague contact with hundreds and sometimes thousands of total strangers on a daily basis.
Added to that must be considered the international travel that we now take for granted. Our desire to be somewhere else is best summed up by a Russian phrase. “The best places to be are those where we are not.”
In terms of international flight we submit ourselves to share cylindrical tubes with hundreds of people we do not know.
Have you ever worried, as you fly to some exotic destination or other about the recycled air you are breathing in? If you have ever suffered a flight where a guy four rows in front of you is suffering a stinking cold you will know what I’m talking about. Air flight is an extreme example, but we have chosen to live within crammed environments not so different from laboratory rats. Trains, busses metro systems and mega shopping malls and open plan offices are but examples. Within each of these environments we breathe in, however diluted, the filtered and recycled and expelled breath of complete strangers and on a regular basis. What if on your next flight one passenger was exhaling an airborne virus with the devastating capability to kill and even worse, a scary thought no?
Welcome to Pandemic where a so called worst case scenario is shown to be not only an understatement, a vague possibility, but actually happens.