The spanish flue was an absolute cataclysm, probably forty times worse than coverd in terms of its impact on the global population. Coved kills the elderly disproportionately, unlike most pandemics, which tend to kill the very young and the very old. I think coven will be worse in the end, because clearly it's not over. And what's going on in countries like india suggests that we're going to see a significant number of deaths between now and the end of the pandemic. But it's still going to be se to 57, 58 than to 19, 19.
Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises, and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. In this episode, Michael Shermer speaks with one of the world’s most renowned historians, Niall Ferguson, who explains why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are making us worse, not better, at handling disasters.