Somewhere — perhaps in a tropical rainforest, perhaps in the thawing permafrost soil or maybe in one of our own cities — the next pathogen to try hum… - Chris von Csefalvay

Computational models of infectious disease can make all the difference in our response to pandemics. As habitat loss and climate change make zoonotic spillover events increasingly more likely, COVID-19 is almost certainly not the last major pan- demic of the 21st century. In fact, it is reasonable to assume that such outbreaks will become increasingly frequent. Computational models can be powerful weapons in our fight against pandemics.

It often takes years to create a viable antibody test as accurate as PCR-based testing. But in less than six weeks, biotech companies—approached by the U.S. government through the White House-created public-private partnership—have already seen their efforts bear fruit. This is a tribute to the incredible creative potential of the biotech sector, but it also shows the power of free enterprise, unshackled by government bureaucracy. It took more than America’s best scientists to rise to the occasion: it took a regulatory regime to let them do so.

Hesiod’s description of Pandora’s box reminds us that though we live in a world of danger, where infectious diseases continue to maim and kill millions, especially across the developing world, we are not without hope. Part of that hope is our ability as humans to bring mathematics, genomics, data science, statistics, and computational science to bear on this problem and call these altogether rather disparate disciplines into humanity’s service against disease. Infectious disease modeling is part of that wider story of hope.