The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.
Can we agree on that? I cannot think of a single epidemic that isn’t massively different from COVID since 1918. I don’t think you can argue that HIV/ebola/H1N1 is remotely like that.
Pointing to the fact that people know there’s a risk of a pandemic in any given year isn’t compelling imo. There’s a risk SF will be devastated from a major earthquake tomorrow, but I’d still be very surprised if it happened.
I’m not sure of anything. And how do you think this evidence of a lab leak will arise? It will only arise with an independent investigation! Which is what I want, into the lab leak and all other possibilities. Do you want the same thing or are you satisfied with the recently released WHO report?
US intelligence has asserted that there were several illnesses at the lab in fall 2019. It’s very, very unclear what weight to put on this, because the assertion was originally made by Pompeo, but the Biden administration has apparently not disavowed that claim. Discussed some here:
This is just trolling at this point. When it’s not A, it’s really B. When it’s not B, it’s really C. When it’s not C, it’s A. There’s no consistency, there’s always some irrelevant detail to point to that doesn’t actually change anything but is now a new thing for you to disprove. No sense arguing someone who doesn’t hold an honest testable position.
Bill Gates says the U.S. government is falling short in preparing the nation and the world for the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.”
It would be trivially easy for me to find dozens and dozens of articles like this that predate the current pandemic.
Pointing to the fact that people know there’s a risk of a pandemic in any given year isn’t compelling imo. There’s a risk SF will be devastated from a major earthquake tomorrow, but I’d still be very surprised if it happened.
So first: I guess I needed to qualify a “highly transmissible respiratory disease,” fine, whatever, and also, COVID has been around for exactly 1 year. Talk to me in 40 years to see how deadly it ended up being when you start comparing it to things like AIDS.
And you probably shouldn’t be surprised to see at least one more major global pandemic in your lifetime either, possibly significantly worse than the current one.
OMG can we stop edgelording about the definition of a black swan event? The point I was making is that these pandemic scare stories are a dime a dozen. There were a ton of them before COVID, and there are even more now that people are paying closer attention. The point is that people don’t need to panic every time some newspaper publishes a story about yet another possible plague that could be the next Covid.
It looks Covid’s death toll as a percentage of world population is going to end up roughly in the same range as the 1957-58 influenza pandemic and the 1968-69 Hong Kong Flu.
I don’t think as a percentage of a worlds population is a valid comparison here. Not sure about that though. Also not over obviously and those are based on estimates. The final death estimate of covid is going to be much higher than the tally of confirmed/suspected covid. Without intervention covid would have blown those numbers out of the water.
Ah yes, who can forget 1957 and 1968, when the entire world had to shut down to prevent our hospital systems from collapsing. You get that it’s not an apples to apples comparison because of advances in medical technology and especially our ability to invent a vaccine in 12 months, right?
