The COVID-19 pandemic was an event none of us could have anticipated. However, it appears that the statistical possibility of another pandemic occurring is not as low as we would have imagined. Researchers have put together a new statistical study, calculating the possibility of another influential pandemic. According to the study, there is a 2 percent chance of a similar pandemic taking place every year. Therefore, every person has a 38 percent chance of experiencing a pandemic during their lifetime.
“The most important takeaway is that large pandemics like COVID-19 and the Spanish flu are relatively likely,” explained global environmental health researcher William Pan from Duke University. In order to determine the likelihood of another pandemic, researchers analyzed historical records from 1600 to the present day. The team discovered that there were 476 epidemics, out of which 114 don’t have the number of deaths recorded, and 145 with less than 10000 deaths.
“The slow decay of probability with epidemic intensity implies that extreme epidemics are relatively likely, a property previously undetected due to short observational records and stationary analysis methods,” reads the paper. A Pareto distribution was used by researchers for data analysis and it was discovered that the probability varies greatly. Researchers anticipate even more epidemics in the future.
“Together with recent estimates of increasing rates of disease emergence from animal reservoirs associated with environmental change,” the team writes, “this finding suggests a high probability of observing pandemics similar to COVID-19 (probability of experiencing it in one’s lifetime currently about 38 percent), which may double in coming decades,” explains the study.
Unfortunately, this might mean that even after solving the COVID-19 crisis, we might encounter another endemic during our life. It is important to learn from the pandemic and become better prepared if another one occurs in the future.
