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I more than $50 billion a year There are now about 370,000 full-time firefighters in the United States, stationed at nearly 30,000 departments.4* Local governments in the U.S. spend more than $50 billion a year staying ready to deal with fires. (I was surprised by how large these numbers are when I looked them up!) And that's not to mention all the steps we take to prevent fires from starting in the first place. For nearly 1,000 years, governments have passed laws to reduce the risk of conflagration, including banning thatched roofs (London in the tenth century) and requiring the safe storage of fuels for bread ovens (Manchester, England, in the sixteenth).5 Today, one large fire-prevention nonprofit publishes a list of more than 300 building codes and standards designed to minimize the risk and extent of fires.6 In other words, for some 2,000 years, humans have recognized that individual families and businesses aren't solely responsible for protecting themselves--they need help from the community. If your neighbor's house is on fire, your home is at risk, and firefighters will take steps to prevent the flames from spreading. And when they're not actively battling a blaze, the fire department will run drills to keep their skills sharp and help out with other activities related to public safety and service. Fires don't spread across the entire world, of course, but diseases do. A pandemic is the equivalent of a fire that starts in one building and within weeks is burning in every country in the world. So to prevent pandemics, we need the equivalent of a global fire department. At the global level, we need a group of experts whose full-time job is to help the world prevent pandemics. It should be responsible for watching out for potential outbreaks, raising the * There are also about 740,000 volunteer firefighters in the United States.