Pandemic risk: how large are the expected losses?

COVID 19 pandemic

We parametrized an exceedance probability function for a global influenza pandemic and estimated that the expected number of influenza-pandemic-related deaths is about 720 000 per year. We calculated that the expected annual losses from pandemic risk to be about 500 billion United States dollars – or 0.6% of global income – per year. This estimate falls within – but towards the lower end of – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s estimates of the value of the losses from global warming, which range from 0.2% to 2% of global income.