Despite evidence to the contrary, Donald Trump evidently believes global warming is a hoax and has set the US on a collision course with the rest of the planet by pulling out of the Paris climate pact.
Last year in August a 12-year-old Siberian boy died and about 20 people were hospitalised with anthrax, which researchers believe came from a reindeer that had died more than 75 years ago and was trapped under permafrost but was released when it thawed in a heatwave.
More than a million reindeer were killed by anthrax in the early 20th century. Most of their carcasses rest near the surface in the Siberian tundra. Other deadly diseases may be lurking in the melting permafrost.
Evolutionary biologist Jean-Michel Claverie told the BBC: "Permafrost is a good preserver of microbes and viruses, because it is cold, there is no oxygen and it is dark. Pathogenic viruses that can infect humans or animals might be preserved in old permafrost layers, including some that have caused global epidemics in the past."
Ribonucleic acid from the Spanish flu has been found in bodies buried in the Alaskan tundra in mass graves and it's believed the bubonic plague and smallpox could be lurking in the Siberian permafrost.
All of which makes Laura Spinney's important new study, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (Jonathan Cape), compelling. It's estimated the disease killed almost 100million people around the world. Death was dreadful; victims drowned, suffocated by their own bodily fluids.
Spinney warns that no less than four pandemics are predicted in the 21st century, with at least one taking the form of flu. Vaccinations won't be cheap as the flu virus is constantly mutating. It's quite likely that Trump won't be reading this book, but here's hoping other world leaders do.
•This article was originally published in The Times.
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