The costs and benefits of primary prevention of zoonotic pandemics

TLDR

Lives lost and economic costs of viral zoonotic pandemics have risen, yet policymakers often advocate detection and containment only after human infection; we argue that prevention before spillover is essential given extensive human–wildlife contact with many viruses. The study investigates three primary prevention actions—enhanced spillover surveillance and genomic databases, wildlife trade management, and deforestation reduction—to reduce future pandemic impact. The authors calculated annualized damages from emerging viral zoonoses to assess the cost‑effectiveness of the proposed prevention actions. The prevention actions cost less than one twentieth of the annual value of lives lost to emerging viral zoonoses and yield substantial co‑benefits.

Abstract

The lives lost and economic costs of viral zoonotic pandemics have steadily increased over the past century. Prominent policymakers have promoted plans that argue the best ways to address future pandemic catastrophes should entail, “detecting and containing emerging zoonotic threats.” In other words, we should take actions only after humans get sick. We sharply disagree. Humans have extensive contact with wildlife known to harbor vast numbers of viruses, many of which have not yet spilled into humans. We compute the annualized damages from emerging viral zoonoses. We explore three practical actions to minimize the impact of future pandemics: better surveillance of pathogen spillover and development of global databases of virus genomics and serology, better management of wildlife trade, and substantial reduction of deforestation. We find that these primary pandemic prevention actions cost less than 1/20th the value of lives lost each year to emerging viral zoonoses and have substantial cobenefits.