> First, we should stop trying to predict or even attach probabilities to disasters. From earthquakes to wars to financial crises, the major disruptions in history have been characterized by random or power-law distributions. They belong in the domain of uncertainty, not risk. It is better to admit that than to delude ourselves with unattainable and probably misleading precision.<p>This paragraphs sums up this article for me. Lots of incoherent finger pointing. "We should do better but let's not delude ourselves that we can". In the one paragraph above he prescribes a model for occurence while telling us it's pointless.<p>This was the main part I found interesting:<p>> Not coincidentally, the places that did best in 2020 included three — Taiwan, South Korea and (despite a serious summer setback) Israel — that face multiple threats, including existential threats from neighbors.<p>So preparedness is a societal mindset. How frequently does a country need to be threatened to maintain this? How long does this mindset last after a threat? How much does preparedness cost a society? I'd have liked him to talk more about these kinds of things.
I've always wondered this since COVID hit. Why has this not happened more frequently? If it were a natural event, why are we not constantly being bombarded with these things? And what happens when we get 3, 4, 5 different ones at once?<p>I'm no conspiracy theorist. But Occam's Razor leans heavily to the side of COVID being a man made catastrophe when you think about that.
He basically lets the Trump administration off the hook but blames public health bureaucracy of California - typical of what I've come to expect from Niall Ferguson, a partisan hack at this point.
>>Though its president, Martin Vizcarra, was also impeached (twice) last year, he cannot really be described as a populist.<p>>>The line of least intellectual resistance has been to blame populist leaders such as U.S. President Donald Trump.<p>How does this make sense?