MERS, H1N1, swine flu, chikungunya, Zika: Another virus with a peculiar name always seems to be right around the corner, threatening to become a pandemic.
Over the past decade, the World Health Organization has declared four global health emergencies. Two of them were in the past two years: the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and the Zika outbreak that's spread through the Americas.
If that seems like a lot, it is. Researchers who charted the rise of infectious diseases from 1980 to 2010 in the journal The Royal Society in 2014 found that outbreaks have indeed become more common in recent decades.
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