Through the Revelatory Lens of Five Pandemics

In this article, we use the pandemic past, combined with the analytical frameworks of One Health and complex systems theory, to predict the pandemic future.The frequency and disruptive effects of future pandemics will likely be amplified due to a feedbacking combination of increasing human civilizational scale, planetary limits impact, global interconnection and complexity (including unprecedented levels of human mobility and anthropogenic disturbance of natural ecosystems). Pandemics are rooted in the dynamics of the human-environment relationship, shaped by the holistic contexts of specific civilizational characteristics and the development of complex feedback systems. Ultimately, the potential seems to exist for a rapidly evolving pandemic to cause a 'hard" planetary collapse in terms of a sudden, catastrophic "Great Simplification" of globalized/highly complex twenty-first century civilization. The holistic approach used here to determine the likely pathogenic parameters of future pandemic events combines historical analogy, complex systems theory and a cross-sectional One Health perspective to evaluate potential risk. Our conclusion is that highly contagious respiratory RNA zoonotic viruses, that also interact with existing chronic disease burdens in populations, clearly constitute the near future's main pandemic pathogenic threat. This conclusion is consistent with (at least) two of the three latest pandemics; it also is congruent with (and supported by) the One Health perspective. The article will also explore a series of broader common and shaping pandemic contexts.