Scenarios 2027 / Scenarios
Rated at Standard Severe. Likelihood type: systemic. Source of scores: ginc-desk-v0.2.
The cluster is reported on a Thursday; genomic sequences are public by Monday and the case fatality estimate, 1.2 per cent, is three times the number the plans were written for. Borders close in the second week; the closures are porous and the pathogen is already in 30 countries. Intensive-care demand passes capacity in week five in the first affected cities and the triage protocols that were drafted but never adopted are adopted overnight. Oxygen, not ventilators, is the binding constraint this time; then it is staff, as 20 per cent of the health workforce is infected or isolating. Export bans on protective equipment and antivirals return within a month, as they did in 2020, and the countries that had built regional manufacturing in the interim find it matters. Schools close; the learning loss of the previous pandemic is doubled. Vaccines arrive in 11 months for the countries that had pre-purchase agreements and in 20 for the ones that did not. The public health measures are contested from the start, because the last pandemic left half the population distrustful of the institutions asking for compliance. The capability that fails first is not the laboratory; it is the state's ability to be believed.
The dateline is illustrative, not a forecast. The narrative is hypothetical; the historical anchors below are real events.
A novel respiratory pathogen with severity between COVID-19 and the 1918 influenza spreads globally; borders close for six months; health systems exceed surge capacity; vaccines take a year. Pandemic ranks first in both the Swiss and Norwegian national risk analyses and is the UK's most likely catastrophic risk. Lloyd's puts the five-year global loss at US$13.6 trillion weighted and up to 6.4 per cent of global GDP in the extreme case. Earlier UK National Risk Register editions assumed an attack rate up to 50 per cent and a case fatality rate up to 2.5 per cent for pandemic influenza.
| Event | Date | What happened | Calibrates |
|---|---|---|---|
| COVID-19 | 2020–2022 | Global GDP fell 3.1 per cent in 2020; millions of deaths; border closures; export bans on medical goods | Standard Severe economic path |
| 1918 influenza | 1918–1919 | Tens of millions of deaths; case fatality above 2.5 per cent | Standard Extreme |
| H5N1 in US dairy cattle | 2024–2025 | Spread across hundreds of herds; dozens of human cases; first US death in January 2025 | zoonotic warning signal |
| Exercise Cygnus | October 2016 | UK pandemic influenza exercise found NHS surge, PPE, social care and excess-death planning inadequate; unpublished until 2020 | capability gaps, non-disclosure lesson |
| Global Health Security Index | 2019 and 2021 | Ranked the US first and the UK second before COVID; outcomes did not follow the rankings | capacity versus capability |
| Lloyd's human pandemic scenario | December 2024 | Five-year global loss US$13.6 trillion weighted; up to 6.4 per cent of global GDP in the extreme case; US$396 billion annual expected loss | systemic impact |
| Swiss and Norwegian national risk analyses | 2025 and 2019 | Pandemic first-ranked hazard in both | national-register precedent |
Shown at their preset values. Parameters are not adjustable in this release and nothing on this page is computed from them. Custom settings run (Phase B) but are labelled 'non-standard run' and excluded from comparisons.
| Parameter | Default | Range or options | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic reproduction number | 2.5 | 1.5–5 | — |
| Infection fatality rate | 1 per cent | 0.3–3 | — |
| Vaccine lead time | 12 months | 4–24 | — |
| Border closure duration | 6 months | 1–12 | — |
| Health-care surge demand multiple | ×3 | ×1.5 to ×6 | — |
| Workforce absence peak | 20 per cent | 10–40 | — |
High: capability band shifts expected under current plans. Medium: band shifts under 'none' policy response only. Low: strain without band shift. Loads are judgement-based until the Atlas connects. Domains link to the Atlas.
| Domain | Load | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| Hard | ||
| Defence and security | Medium | military medical and logistics support; biosecurity |
| Strategic infrastructure | Medium | essential services under workforce absence |
| Critical technology | High | genomic surveillance, vaccine and therapeutics manufacturing |
| Soft | ||
| Government effectiveness | High | public health command, procurement, communication, border policy |
| Human capital | High | health system surge, workforce, education continuity |
| Influence and cohesion | High | trust, compliance, information integrity |
| Economic | ||
| Macro-financial | High | fiscal expansion, output loss |
| Industry, trade and supply | High | medical goods, export bans, logistics |
| Energy and resources | Low | demand collapse |
| Region | Exposure | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| North America | High | Connectivity; trust deficits |
| Europe | High | — |
| China | High | Density; prior experience |
| Indo-Pacific | High | Connectivity; strong prior response capability |
| South Asia | High | Density, health system capacity |
| Gulf and Middle East | Medium | Capital; migrant workforce |
| Africa | High | Health system capacity; late vaccine access |
| Latin America and Caribbean | High | — |
| Russia and Eurasia | Medium | — |
| Indicator | Source | Threshold |
|---|---|---|
| WHO Disease Outbreak News and PHEIC declarations | — | — |
| Zoonotic surveillance (H5N1 herd and human case counts) | — | — |
| Wastewater surveillance | — | — |
| Genomic sequence sharing speed | GISAID | — |
| Vaccine platform and manufacturing capacity by region | — | — |
| IHR Joint External Evaluation scores | — | — |
| Trust in health authorities | — | — |
From the GINC 250: trends rated Very high or Critical for this scenario. All S14 trend scores.
| Rating | Band or level | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Likelihood, two years | 3Possible | Estimates of the annual probability of a COVID-scale pandemic run near 2 per cent, giving 1 to 5 per cent over two years. |
| Likelihood, ten years | 4Likely | — |
| Systemic impact | 5Catastrophic | On COVID's output loss and Lloyd's extreme case. |
| National impact | 5Catastrophic | — |
| Confidence | medium | — |
Source of scores: ginc-desk-v0.2. Confidence refers to the rating, not the scenario. Calibration sources are listed with the anchors above and on the methodology page.
Contested assumptions for the panel to resolve.
No signed commentary in this build.
0.2.0 · active0.2.0 · 2 October 2026 · Entered the Library at v0.2 with GINC desk scores.GINC (2027). Scenario S14 Pandemic with a novel pathogen, Scenario Library v0.2. scenarios.ginc.org/library/pandemic-novel-pathogenContent and data are published under CC BY 4.0.