8 For years, scientists have warned the Nipah virus -- a brain-swelling disease 75 times more deadly than COVID -- could be the next pandemic. Knowing that this fruit bat-borne virus has the potential to trigger an epidemic, researchers at the Uniformed Services University (USU) have long studied the virus and recently reported on the development of a single-dose vaccine that, in preclinical trials, has proven effective against it as early as seven days after immunization. The Nipah virus first emerged in the late 1990s, causing serious disease outbreaks in humans and livesto...