Globalization accelerates the mobilization of microorganisms via international trade and transport. Growth in population, increasing connectivity, and rapid urbanization all exacerbate the consequent risk of pandemics of zoonotic diseases. Global problems require global solutions, particularly the co-ordination of international research in biomedical sciences, global ecology, and sustainability. Main Text Globalization Promotes Pandemic Disease The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a clear example of how globalization speeds the planetary-scale mobilization of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs). The devastating impacts on human health and global economies arose as a consequence of a single novel viral transmission event, which was first reported on December 31, 2019, in Wuhan City, China. Assisted by human transport, the virus spread across the entire globe in as little as 3 months, leading to the announcement of a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic is not an isolated event; viruses and microorganisms constantly move between humans, animals, plants, and the environment (Figure 1), and now they do so on a planetary scale at an increasing and unprecedented pace driven by international transport of goods and produce, ballast water, and exponentially growing human travel via air, sea, and land. The scale of the global movement of people and potential spread of infectious diseases during outbreaks is exemplified by the number of global airline passengers—a key factor in the rapid dissemination of viruses and microorganisms around the planet—which has increased by an order of magnitude in recent decades (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Human and Emerging Infectious Diseases (A) Humans, animals, and the environment share a complex microbial world. (B) The cumulative EIDs and zoonotic EIDs of humans since 1940, in which non-wildlife and wildlife represent the zoonotic EID event caused by a pathogen with no known and known wildlife origin, respectively. (C) Effects of food and drug drivers on the number of EID events per decade. For (B) and (C), data were collected from the Jones et al. database.

Figure 2. Airline Passengers Carried Include Both Domestic and International Passengers of Air Carriers Registered in the Country (A–C) Number of airline passengers carried in 1970 (A), 2018 (B), and 1970–2018 (C). Data sources: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/IS.AIR.PSGR and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.PSGR. (D) Global spread of MERS-CoV across 26 countries. Unit: ×1012 passengers.