The researchers and filmmakers had no clue they were examining 'mammothpox' when they all unexpectedly became sick.
The new virus was spreading through a meticulously preserved woolly mammoth sample as the permafrost melted, revealing the permanently frozen soil.
As they examined the tissue samples, the team members started getting sick sequentially, exhibiting symptoms similar to Mpox or smallpox.
They were aware that the virus would spread rapidly—and another pandemic was quite likely.
Don’t worry, you’re not going to catch a virus that makes you grow fur and a trunk anytime soon.
'Mammothpox' is the name of a hypothetical virus used by the World Health Organization (WHO). used to test how prepared 15 countries are scheduled for April 2 during the pandemic.
The WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned earlier this month that a new pandemic "it might occur in 20 years or longer, or it could be tomorrow," referring to it as an 'epidemiological certainty'.
During the two-day simulation called Exercise Polaris, 350 healthcare emergency personnel gathered to manage a 'deadly and rapidly spreading' virus outbreak.
Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ethiopia, Germany, Iraq, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mozambique, Nepal, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia, Uganda, and Ukraine all participated, with several nations serving as observers.
Every country received a 'tiny fragment of the puzzle' to observe whether - and how - they would exchange data. The Telegraph reported.
For instance, one nation was informed that an Arctic scientist fell sick with a 'pox-like ailment' prior to embarking on a cruise ship carrying 2,450 passengers and 908 crew members.
What is 'mammothpox'? Is it actually a thing?
No, don’t fret. It’s not genuine.
According to the newspaper, WHO documents characterized mammothpox as a condition with a fatality rate that falls between those of Mpox and smallpox.
The woolly virus is moderately good at spreading between people and has ‘minimal asymptomatic spread’, when people don’t show any symptoms.
The symptoms of Mammothpox are depicted as comparable to those of Mpox, involving a fever, headache, and a blister-like rash that develops into crusty pustules.
Similar to smallpox, a deadlier and more infectious version of Mpox can cause severe sores and leaking lesions as well.
Smallpox was eliminated in 1980, yet prior to this achievement, it claimed as many as 500,000 lives during the 20th century; the disease had a fatality rate of 30%.
How did the global community respond to the mammothpox pandemic?
The simulated drills unfolded over the initial three weeks of the hypothetical pandemic.
During the second day of the drill, health workers were informed that politics had already begun obstructing attempts to curb the outbreak.
Some countries enforced ‘strict border controls, banned all international arrivals and restricted internal movement,’ while others relied on ‘contact tracing, isolation and quarantine measures’.
In just a few weeks, hospitals became overcrowded and healthcare systems began to struggle.
Can mammothpox really happen?
In the face of climate disaster, the quantity of sea ice globally has hit an unprecedented level. the lowest point ever measured in March .
As glaciers and ice sheets melt, the ground beneath, which has been frozen for a thousand years, is beginning to thaw.
What lies frozen inside this ice can be preserved so perfectly that scientists have managed to dine on woolly mammoth meatballs or cultivate a bloom from a 32,000-year-old seed .
A gram of frozen soil from permanently ice-covered regions can hold hundreds of thousands Of various dormant microbe species.
Researchers believe that each year, melting ice unleashes approximately four sextillion (4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) microbes into the environment.
Certain pathogens that researchers have extracted from the permafrost encompass pithovirus sibericum a massive 30,000-year-old virus that devours amoebae.
Or the pithovirus discovered within a piece of 27,000-year-old frozen mammoth hair extracted from the shores of Russia’s Yana River.
They both affect only amoebas, which are unicellular organisms, and present no danger to humans.
But an anthrax outbreak in Western Siberia during 2016 was attributed to the melting of permafrost in the region where the bacteria Bacillus anthracis spores were located.
A 2023 study examined the potential damage, if any, that these old viruses might cause in humans.
They discovered that releasing just 1% of these 'time-traveling' pathogens could endanger the planet's ecosystems. However, the group didn’t assess the risks to human beings.
'The findings indicate that the threat is no longer merely an illusion we can afford to ignore and must prepare to counter,' the researchers stated.
Even so, experts explain that these studies are not designed to forecast the subsequent pandemic. Instead, their purpose is to highlight that the Arctic might become the next hotspot for viruses—emphasizing the critical importance of maintaining as much permafrost in a frozen state as feasible.
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