Pre-COVID claim that a pandemic was inevitable

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I used to be a freelance theater critic for a local paper. At one point, I wrote a few news articles in an attempt to get on staff. One of my assignments was to cover a symposium on the bird flu hosted by local government officials.

At the event, we were told that while nobody knew what was going to happen with the bird flu, a global pandemic of some kind was inevitable -- they happened about once every hundred years and we were "overdue" for one at that time. This was probably around 2007.

I'm not a medical expert and I have no idea how or if the current pandemic could have been prevented. It's just interesting to me that the narrative we were told at that event seems to have completely disappeared in the time of COVID. Or at least, I'm not seeing it anywhere. As the pandemic has become politicized (at least here in the U.S.) both sides seem interested in claiming that it was caused by the other side and could have been prevented by their own side.

Not surprised that experts were saying that because it WAS bound to happen.

Infectious diseases come and go through history like the seasons. And the appear when barriers to trade and commerce fall.

Genghis Khan conquered Asia and Eastern Europe, and enforced security on the trade routes between east and west through the steppes of central Asia. About century later a bacteria that lived in fleas in marmots on the steppe spread to rats, and the bubonic plague swept across the length of Eurasia killing like a third of Europe.

Columbus discovered America. This resulted in the diseases of Eurasia spreading the indigenious people of the Americas. Killing millions.

The First World War caused millions of soldier to move from several continents to the western front in Europe - this cause the spread of the killer "Spanish" flu that kill half of a million Americans, and atleast 20 million more people world wide.

Around 1990 the Communism fell, the iron curtain that blocked commerce vanished, and China switched to capitalism. The rise of China and the new intensified globalism just sets up the planet for plague after plague. We had some "failed plagues" (west nile, and bird) that spread, but sputtered out. But we finnally got a winner- with Covid.

And Covid is the gift of globalization that just keeps on giving...it keeps spawning new and worse variants!

in my country, they had epidemiologists on tv and the polirical discussion was about how dangerous it is and what measures are reasonable - enough to get into arguments about. - byt you have to be an exceptional American, I guess, to believe you could have prevented it, were it not for "those idiots in congress!"

In the early stages of the pandemic, Taiwan instituted “test ‘n’ trace” checkpoints, where someone would take your temperature, and if you had a fever, you had to see a doctor immediately. If not, you could go about your day.

Their preemptive approach kept cases low, and there were no lockdowns. Though, to be fair, people were already wearing masks due to their experiences with SARS and bird flu.

There was a scientist colleague of mine who said he was pretty sure that one of these days there'd be some bad contagious disease or other that would wreak havoc because of all this international travel.

Yes I cancelled a holiday to the US during the birdflu outbreak. Lost thousands of dollars.

Thanks for the responses. I'm glad to see that other people remember this.

The symposium was basically about having a First Aid kit and non-perishable food supplies, etc., in case a pandemic broke out. Mentioning it was inevitable may have been to get us to take those precautions even if the bird flu never came here, but it didn't work on me. I came home saying "Well, that was boring. I guess non-entertainment related journalism is not for me."

For many years, it seemed like the American media trotted out the idea of a global pandemic whenever there was a slow news day. At one point, "Family Guy" even commented on this. I thought COVID would probably be the same thing, until Disneyland voluntarily closed.

I'm sorry that happened to you.

There's no contradiction in saying that a pandemic was inevitable but that people's actions or inactions made it worse than it had to be.

But who would have thought that the worst health crisis of our time would be caused by the stupidity of the human animal?

And then, to compound the problem, the people/governments involved would obfuscate, gaslight, shirk responsibility to try and muddly the waters so this sort of thing could happen all over again, with probably greater consequences.

What a joke.
"Humanity", the laughingstock of the universe.

But their reputation and politics are more important than the deaths of millions of people, naturally.
Same old same old.

How many movies have used this premise?

Damn, I'm glad I haven't brought life into such stupidity.

I agree, however, I don't usually see people saying things like that. Usually it's more like "It's a hoax by the other side" or "If it wasn't for the other side/other country/what-have-you, nobody would have died."



Our species does a lot of laughable things, however I see no reason to think that any other sentient species that may exist would be any less laughable .