>>12573656I guess experience would be a way to go, you could easily predict things like the spread in nursing homes and patient-care facilities, essentially any place where people with weakened immune-system live in somewhat close proximity, because this is were just about any transmittable disease tends to spread like wildfire in the beginning, then the effect of the season on transmission rates and severity of cases. Once you have a slight grasp about what kind of pathogen you're dealing with and how it's spread, any experienced clinician could probably give you a good prognosis for it's spread and the severity of the pandemic. A mathematical approach to a pandemic is kind of a mixed bag, as with every model, you get what you put in, so especially in early phases of a pandemic with very little info, your predictions are heavily influenced by the bias of the researcher. A current example for this would be the way asymptomatic transmission rates where handled for covid, some early models worked with rates as high as 80%, whereas of now the higher assumptions are at about 40-50% with some research even suggesting there is non. Considering how massive the impact of asymptomatic transmission is for the development of a pandemic, a failed assumption like this will heavily impact the validity of your model.
