Biosurveillance can catch stealth pandemics early

Wastewater biosurveillance that detects sudden explosions of never-before-seen DNA sequences via deep metagenomic sequencing can catch even a 'stealth pandemic' with a long asymptomatic incubation period; the Nucleic Acid Observatory's proposed $15 million system sampling eight major international airports could detect a pathogen well before 1% population prevalence, and budgets scale roughly linearly with sensitivity.