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multitude which by chance benefited from an accidental chain of events leading to disease emergence (definition of an accident). It is unpredictable and the chain of events is of societal nature not of biological nature. It is impossible to say which one out of all the viruses found in the wild may evolve in humans to give a pandemic virus. The ancestor of the pandemic virus might even have not been found. 3) We are dealing with metapopulations of viruses circulating widely and evolving and changing all the time 4) They evolve so fast that in the theoretical case we could find all the viruses present in all animals in a region, if we do it again two years later on the same animals, we will not find the same viruses. Viruses found at a time T0 cannot help to say which one will emerge at time T4 or T5. 5) The surveillance is really useless. We don't know what to look for and having a catalog does not tell which one in the list may evolve in a virus well adapted to humans and if this virus will ever encounter the societal chain of events leading to the emergence of a disease (the amplification loop). This is why the emergences of diseases are so rare. 6) Surveillance for disease or symptoms is useless also since when we see the symptoms it is too late, the virus has already spread. 6) To summarize, after the emergence of the disease it is too late and the surveillance of pathogens cannot tell which virus may emerge one day. I am attaching two manuscripts that have just been accepted today (both the same day !) They will be online soon. One is in Environmental Research (Elsevier) and the other in New Microbes New Infections (Elsevier) . They might help clarifying several things. Best Roger Le 08/07/2021 à 22:12, Jon Cohen a écrit : Roger, An editor raised an interesting question. Even if there technically is no spillover and a stochastic event leads to the zoonotic jump that takes and causes an outbreak, would surveillance of animals have value because it could potentially find a close relative of SARS-CoV-2? As is, we don't have any close relatives. Thanks, Jon <Opinion unpreparedness_Revised.pdf><Article comments Accepted.pdf><Figure 1_Comment_Article_MacLean.pdf>``` [2021-07-09 03:00:12] [Andrew Rambaut] Roger has some relevant points but then as you go up the thread gets increasingly bonkers: [2021-07-09 03:00:23] [Andrew Rambaut] ````It is a quasispecies evolution. Human viruses exist only in humans. SARS-CoV-2 is just one of the multiple human avatars of the SARS metapopulation. SARS-CoV is another one. Both have emerged by chance.