If we believe that an unknown pandemic is overdue, what precautions are reasonable to take now? We turned to four infectious disease experts for answers. 

✔ Vaccines

To maximize your protection from a new disease, make sure you and your family are up to date on vaccines for known diseases, from the flu and pneumonia to shingles and whooping cough.

✔ Virus knowledge

One of your best weapons during a disease outbreak is knowledge, says Dr. Jonathan Temte of the University of Wisconsin. "Keep up with the news and try to understand what threats might be out there," he says.

✔ Very clean hands

The CDC calls hand-washing the "do-it-yourself vaccine." And all the experts repeated the recommendation: Learn how to clean your hands properly and do it.

Beyond Lyme: New Tick-Borne Diseases On The Rise In U.S.

The doctors thought Tucker Lane was going through opiate withdrawal. His mother Lynn Cash felt differently: “I knew it was a tick thing.”

Scans of his brain showed that it was swelling. And he was quickly losing consciousness. His doctors decided to rush him to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"By the time they got him upstairs [into a room], within another 48 hours, he was in a coma," Cash says.

Although doctors didn't realize it at the time, it was a tick-borne disease called Powassan flooding Lane's brain.

Ticks are a growing problem in the U.S. Over the past 50 years, scientists have detected a dozen new diseases transmitted by the critters across the U.S.

There are many ways to protect yourself from tick-borne diseases. Wear long sleeves, spray on DEET and check yourself every night in the mirror — just to name a few.

But protecting whole towns, or even just a neighborhood, has been difficult.

But scientists think they've come up with a way that may finally cut down on the cases of tick-borne illnesses in the Northeast: mice. 

What’s the difference between a pandemic, epidemic and outbreak? This handy guide can help. 

What new viruses are emerging in your backyard? 

If you're a germaphobe, make sure you're sitting down.

Back in 1999, a woman in California cleaned up rodent droppings in her home. Two weeks later, her liver started failing. Then she started to bleed internally — a hemorrhagic fever that would kill her. Eventually doctors found a new virus in her body, which very likely came from a rat.

A few years later, a man in Arizona went to the hospital. The skin on his legs was infected and dying. Doctors had to amputate. His diagnosis? A new kind of leprosy.

Over in the Midwest, the problem has been new tick-borne diseases, some deadly. And in New England, doctors are dealing with a disease that causes Lyme-like symptoms but is caused by a different bacteria.

Each year thousands of people from around the world tour the Gomantong Cave in Borneo. Although scientists have found a potentially dangerous virus in bats that roost in the cave, no one has ever gotten sick from a trip here.

See how viruses from animals jumped to humans – and how they became deadly. Watch the full explainer here: