In the aftermath of the West African Ebola crisis,
the World Bank along with the World Health
Organization, reinsurers, and a catastrophic risk
modeling firm, developed the Pandemic
Emergency Financing Facility (PEF). The aim of the
PEF was to leverage private investment to finance
pandemic emergency responses in poor countries.
This effort hinged on the formal mathematical
rendering of 'pandemic potential.' Pandemic
potential - the likelihood that a particular
pathogen could cause mass sickness across
national borders over a short period of time
indexes a particular relationship between
pathogens and public health scientists' prophetic
relation to the past.