I think of SARS & MERS as near-misses. They could've been a lot worse if the viruses were just a bit more contagious. Overall, it seems like some form of pandemic could be expected at least every 25 years or so, on average! I also wonder if this might be increasing in frequency as the world population grows & global travel becomes ever more common.
I think covid has been handled exceptionally poorly at every turn. Globally, we need to get a lot better at handling something like this. As bad as some viruses have been, it's not difficult to imagine even worse ones if a parameter or two were tweaked.
AIDS - an ongoing pandemic, 32 000 000 + deaths and counting (per Wikipedia). (The cynical adage about news applies here: "nothing ever happens in Africa.")
Mad Cow disease - major near miss. I am still not allowed to donate blood to this day, because I was in the UK in the mid-'80s.
It's egregiously lazy to call Covid-19 a "black swan".
Honestly given how the population in 1918 was between 1-2 billion [1], 1957 2.8 billion and 1968 3.5 billion, given that there's over twice as many people around now, we got off lightly.
1957 - 1958 pandemic estimated to have killed ~1.1 million people worldwide: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemi...
1968 pandemic estimated to have killed 1 million worldwide: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.htm...
I think of SARS & MERS as near-misses. They could've been a lot worse if the viruses were just a bit more contagious. Overall, it seems like some form of pandemic could be expected at least every 25 years or so, on average! I also wonder if this might be increasing in frequency as the world population grows & global travel becomes ever more common.
I think covid has been handled exceptionally poorly at every turn. Globally, we need to get a lot better at handling something like this. As bad as some viruses have been, it's not difficult to imagine even worse ones if a parameter or two were tweaked.