Ginkgo Bioworks have now provided a more detailed report to the New Zealand Royal Commission on COVID-19 Lessons Learned - Estimated Future Mortality from Pathogens of Epidemic and Pandemic Potential - hereafter called the Bioworks report.
Risk is estimated through computational epidemiology and extreme events modeling simulations to estimate mortality from "Low frequency, high severity" epidemics and pandemics from respiratory diseases, particularly pandemic influenza, novel coronaviruses, and viral hemorrhagic fevers.
Figure 5 in the Bioworks report, illustrating the relative impact on average annualized mortality of very rare but high mortality events.
The highest two mortality events in Panel B that are contributing almost 50% of the total average predicted mortality may not have occurred in the past 500 years.
There has not been such an annual influenza mortality in a century, and only twice in the past century, in 1957-8 and 1968-9, did the mortality rate reach what the model suggests is average.
The WHO considers Covid-19, if included as a natural outbreak, has a reported mortality of just over seven million over three years.
In view of the enormous changes in medicine over the last 100 years, and the continuing steady decrease in infectious disease mortality, the assumptions underlying the model's predictions seem implausible.
Full report can be found at: https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/download/254/when-models-and-reality-clash-a-review-of-predictions-of-epidemic-and-pandemic-mortality
REPPARE reports on pandemic risk and financing for the pandemic preparedness and response agenda are at: https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/directories0/dir-record/research-projects/1260/reevaluating-the-pandemic-preparedness-and-response-agenda-reppare
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