Will there be a warning for the next pandemic?
Justin Lessler, C. Jessica E. Metcalf · 2026
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Description
Justin Lessler and Jessica Metcalf ask whether science will see the next pandemic coming in this 2026 paper. How to spend resources against new pathogens is an open question, and one hope is that failed emergences, spillovers that fizzle, might warn of a coming threat.
Using archetypes that link a pathogen's genes to its fitness in animals and in humans, the authors test that hope across many plausible settings. They find that emergences with pandemic potential are unlikely to be preceded by failed attempts that anyone could detect. Still, counts of failed events carry information about risk. The strongest levers, they argue, are factors that reshape fitness, such as bridge species ecology.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Justin Lessler, C. Jessica E. Metcalf |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 30 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |