There are the health woes we worry about year after year — think obesity, diabetes, and opioid addiction — and then there are the ones that threaten to catch us off guard. We’re talking about the public health enemies that emerge with sudden, unexpected force — and then leave us all wondering why we didn’t see them coming.
This year, it was Ebola, the deadly virus responsible for thousands of lives lost in West Africa. “Ebola has gotten most of the attention this year,” says Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas. Yet, despite fears of a stateside epidemic, the virus never invaded U.S. borders in serious numbers — and it’s not likely to do so in 2015, he says, even as the war against Ebola in West Africa rages on.
But there are other viruses — some familiar, some not — that are poised for attack on U.S. soil in the coming year, whether we’re ready or not. And it’s just not infectious invaders we have to worry about, either — there are also a handful of homegrown health foes, ranging from fracking to inferior health insurance, threatening to tighten their grip in 2015.
