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> A respiratory pandemic of this magnitude wasn't anticipated by anyone, for reasons that should be investigated further. Right, we had close calls in the near
by foobarian 7y ago
> A respiratory pandemic of this magnitude wasn't anticipated by anyone, for reasons that should be investigated further.
Right, we had close calls in the near past, but why did they not spread like this one?
- varjag 7y agoDue to combination of enormous containment effort and luck. And of course a crisis averted becomes a source of Internet jokes rather than a lesson in preparedness. But you can't be lucky all the time.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoI'd say the "near-misses" were a few orders of magnitude less severe. This virus is extremely uncommon in that it is both severe, highly transmissible and a completely new type of virus. I really don't think most people in developed countries would have agreed to spend a couple Billion Dollars to have reserves in the healthcare system, including ventilators, hospital beds and personnel, in order to prevent a problem a couple of magnitudes bigger than anticipated.