When will the pandemic be over? Computer science may have the answer
In early 2022, almost two a long time just after Covid was declared a pandemic by the World Wellbeing Corporation, professionals are mulling a big problem: when is a pandemic “over”?
So, what is the solution? What requirements must be utilized to ascertain the “end” of Covid’s pandemic section? These are deceptively straightforward issues and there are no uncomplicated answers.
I am a laptop scientist who investigates the growth of ontologies. In computing, ontologies are a suggests to formally structure expertise of a topic domain, with its entities, relations, and constraints, so that a personal computer can system it in numerous programs and help humans to be more exact.
Ontologies can find expertise that’s been disregarded right until now: in a person occasion, an ontology recognized two more useful domains in phosphatases (a group of enzymes) and a novel area architecture of a component of the enzyme. Ontologies also underlie Google’s Understanding Graph which is driving those people know-how panels on the right-hand aspect of a search final result.
Applying ontologies to the questions I posed at the get started is beneficial. This tactic assists to make clear why it is tough to specify a reduce-off issue at which a pandemic can be declared “over”. The method requires collecting definitions and characterizations from domain gurus, like epidemiologists and infectious ailment experts, consulting applicable study and other ontologies, and investigating the nature of what entity “X” is.
“X”, listed here, would be the pandemic by itself – not a mere shorthand definition, but searching into the qualities of that entity. This sort of a specific characterization of the “X” will also expose when an entity is “not an X”. For instance, if X = household, a residence of properties is that they all should have a roof if some object doesn’t have a roof, it definitely is not a home.
With individuals features in hand, a precise, official specification can be formulated, aided by added procedures and equipment. From that, the what or when of “X” – the pandemic is around or it is not – would logically observe. If it doesn’t, at the very least it will be doable to demonstrate why factors are not that easy.
This sort of precision complements wellbeing experts’ initiatives, serving to humans to be more precise and talk far more exactly. It forces us to make implicit assumptions explicit and clarifies where by disagreements might be.
Definitions and diagrams
I performed an ontological assessment of “pandemic”. To start with, I desired to locate definitions of a pandemic.
Informally, an epidemic is an occurrence through which there are many cases of an infectious illness in organisms, for a constrained duration of time, that impacts a local community of explained organisms residing in some region. A pandemic, as a minimum, extends the area in which the bacterial infections acquire spot.
Next, I drew from existing foundational ontologies. This includes generic types like “object”, “process”, and “quality”. I also applied area ontologies, which comprise entities precise to a subject matter area, like infectious ailments. Amongst other resources, I consulted the Infectious Disease Ontology and the Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering.
Initial, I aligned “pandemic” to a foundational ontology, utilizing a choice diagram to simplify the method. This aided to operate out what variety of detail and generic category “pandemic” is:
(1) Is [pandemic] a thing that is happening or developing? Indeed (perdurant, i.e., some thing that unfolds in time, instead than be wholly current).
(2) Are you able to be present or participate in [a pandemic]? Yes (celebration).
(3) Is [a pandemic] atomic, i.e., has no subdivisions and has a definite endpoint? No (accomplishment).
The term “accomplishment” may possibly look unusual right here. But, in this context, it will make clear that a pandemic is a temporal entity with a limited lifespan and will evolve – that is, stop to be a pandemic and evolve again to epidemic, as indicated in this diagram.

Traits
Subsequent, I examined a pandemic’s attributes explained in the literature. A detailed list is explained in a paper by US infectious sickness specialists revealed in 2009 during the global H1N1 influenza virus outbreak. They collated eight qualities of a pandemic.
I detailed them and assessed them from an ontological standpoint:
- Broad geographic extension. This is an imprecise attribute – be it fuzzy in the mathematical feeling or believed by other implies: there is not a crisp threshold when “wide” begins or finishes.
- Illness motion: there’s transmission from place to spot and that can be traced. A certainly/no attribute, but it could be manufactured categorical or with ranges of how slowly or speedy it moves.
- Substantial attack premiums and explosiveness, or: quite a few people today are afflicted in a short time span. Many, quick, rapidly – all suggest imprecision.
- Small populace immunity: immunity is relative. You have it to a degree to some or all of the variants of the infectious agent, and also for the inhabitants. This is an inherently fuzzy feature.
- Novelty: A sure/no characteristic, but a person could include “partial”.
- Infectiousness: it need to be infectious (excluding non-infectious factors, like weight problems), so a very clear yes/no.
- Contagiousness: this may perhaps be from man or woman to person or as a result of some other medium. This property includes human-to-human, human-animal intermediary (e.g., fleas, rats), and human-natural environment (notably: h2o, as with cholera), and their attendant facets.
- Severity: Historically, the expression “pandemic” has been utilized more typically for critical diseases or those with high fatality premiums (e.g., HIV/AIDS) than for milder types. This has some subjectivity, and therefore might be fuzzy.
Properties with imprecise boundaries annoy epidemiologists for the reason that they may perhaps direct to distinct results of their prediction styles. But from my ontologist’s viewpoint, we’re having someplace with these homes. From the computational facet, automated reasoning with fuzzy options is possible.
COVID, at the very least early in 2020, conveniently ticked all eight packing containers. A suitably automated reasoner would have categorized that predicament as a pandemic. But now, in early 2022? Severity (point 8) has mostly diminished and immunity (place 4) has risen. Stage 5 – are there worse variants of problem to occur – is the million-greenback issue. Far more ontological evaluation is essential.
Highlighting the complications
Ontologically speaking, then, a pandemic is an event (“accomplishment”) that unfolds in time. To be categorised as a pandemic, there are a range of functions that are not all crisp and for which the imprecise boundaries have not all been established. Conversely, it indicates that classifying the celebration as “not a pandemic” is just as imprecise.
This is not a whole reply as to what a pandemic is ontologically, but it does shed light on the troubles of contacting it “over” – and illustrates well that there will be disagreement about it.
This post by Maria Keet, Associate professor in Laptop Science, College of Cape City is republished from The Conversation less than a Resourceful Commons license. Study the unique posting.