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Warning Signs of Potential Black Swan Outbreaks in Infectious Disease
Nileena Velappan1, Katie Davis-Anderson1, Alina Deshpande1
1Biosecurity and Public Health, Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States.
Frontiers in Microbiology
|March 14, 2022
Summary
Identifying warning signs for infectious disease black swan events is possible. Analyzing historical outbreak data reveals common features that can alert authorities to impending large-scale epidemics, improving response efforts.
Area of Science:
- Epidemiology
- Infectious Diseases
- Public Health Analytics
Background:
- Black swan events in infectious diseases are rare, large-scale outbreaks with devastating consequences.
- Predicting these events is challenging, but identifying early warning signs following an outbreak's initiation may be feasible.
- Common features across pathogen, environment, and host factors could characterize these high-impact events.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate potential common features of infectious disease black swan events.
- To explore the utility of data analytics in identifying early warning signs for large outbreaks.
- To assess if these events are linked solely to the initial introduction of a pathogen.
Main Methods:
- Utilized Los Alamos National Laboratory's Analytics for Investigation of Disease Outbreaks tool.
- Analyzed historical outbreak data and anomalous events for 32 different infectious diseases.
- Conducted a meta-analysis of large outbreaks across multiple infectious disease categories.
Main Results:
- Potential black swan events have occurred in the majority of analyzed infectious diseases in the last 20-30 years.
- These significant outbreaks were not solely attributable to the initial introduction of the disease to a susceptible population.
- Broad data analysis across various infectious diseases provided insights not obtainable from single-agent studies.
Conclusions:
- Common epidemiological features may characterize infectious disease black swan events.
- Data analytics tools can be developed to provide early warnings for impending large outbreaks.
- Such tools can complement traditional epidemiological modeling for improved forecasting and resource allocation.
Keywords:
black swan eventinfectious diseaseoutbreak analysisprediction and forecastingvisual analyticMore Related Videos
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