← Swine Disease Prioritization Matrix
Work in progress · method settled, numbers provisional
One hundred and forty‑five agents go into the ranking. Thirteen do not, because at least one criterion has nothing behind it. This is what happens to them.
Nothing is ever invented to fill a gap. A level that was guessed looks exactly like a level that was evidenced, and no later reader can tell them apart. So where the evidence does not reach, the cell stays empty and the agent comes out of the ranking — openly, by name, rather than being quietly carried at a made‑up value.
Being here is a statement about the evidence, not about the agent. Every one of the thirteen still has a full brief on the website, with the criteria that could be scored and the reasons for each. What is missing is marked not assessed, never low risk.
| Agent | Type | Criteria missing | Which |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dengue virus | virus | 1 of 8 | Market impact |
| Hendra VirusHenipavirus hendraense | virus | 1 of 8 | Market impact |
| Murray Valley Encephalitis Virus | virus | 1 of 8 | Market impact |
| Ross River Virus | virus | 1 of 8 | Market impact |
| Trueperella abortisuis | bacteria | 1 of 8 | Treatment potential |
| Porcine Pegivirus | virus | 2 of 8 | Production cost, Treatment potential |
| Lassa VirusLassa mammarenavirus | virus | 3 of 8 | Herd introduction risk, Market impact, Vaccine availability |
| Coxiella burnetii (Q fever) | bacteria | 3 of 8 | Production cost, Treatment potential, Vaccine availability |
| Porcine Circovirus 4 | virus | 4 of 8 | Herd introduction risk, Production cost, Treatment potential, Vaccine availability |
| Animal TrypanosomiasisTrypanosoma | parasite | 5 of 8 | Zoonotic potential, Zoonotic impact, Production cost, Market impact, Vaccine availability |
| Porcine Ephemeroviruses 1 and 2 | virus | 7 of 8 | All but detection difficulty |
| Parechovirus ahumpari (Parechovirus A) | virus | 8 of 8 | Everything |
| Tottorivirus asuscro (Tottorivirus A) | virus | 8 of 8 | Everything |
Dengue, Hendra, Murray Valley encephalitis and Ross River are each missing one criterion, and it is the same one: market impact. No pig market anywhere has ever reacted to any of them, so there is no precedent to read — and no study can create one. That cell resolves when an event happens, or never.
They belong on a watch list, not a research list. That is a third of the candidates removed on principle rather than on priority, and it is the most useful thing this analysis produces.
the trap The two agents missing all eight criteria would score at the very top if you allowed the gaps to count as potential. That is not evidence they matter — it is an artefact of knowing nothing about them. Allocating on potential alone sends the whole budget to the agents we know least about, precisely because we know least about them.
The other nine each imply a specific piece of work — a prevalence study, a treatment trial, a basic characterisation of the agent. They differ enormously in what they buy. At one end, a single characterisation study on an agent nobody has described closes most of its cells at once and moves it into the ranking outright. At the other, one treatment trial closes one cell and completes one agent.
So the question for these thirteen is not where would they rank — they cannot be ranked, which is why they are here. It is which of them is worth a slice, and what the money would buy.
The method is settled; the numbers behind the nine researchable agents are placeholders until the committee’s weights arrive, at which point this re‑runs in seconds. Published so these thirteen are on the record rather than quietly dropped.