Hacker News Reader

Yes, pandemics are to be expected. The impact and magnitude of response necessary for this one is not predictable. The last one that came close was over 100 years ago.

View on HN

Yes, so that means it's well within the range of what should be expected, albeit probability weighted. This is a classic low probability, high impact event, which is precisely one of the things insurance is for.

Insurance systems are not good at dealing with highly correlated risks.

Insurance companies can only afford to pay out because not everyone files a claim at once.

"pandemic" is a big scary word that mostly describes the global distribution of a disease. The classical definition includes nothing about population immunity, virology or disease severity.

Ebola was/is a big deal for the past 45 years off an on.

Yep. Let’s not forget HIV. We’ve had several flu pandemics in the past 100 years, as well.

> Ebola was/is a big deal for the past 45 years off an on.

But never a pandemic (if Ebola retained it's deadliness and gained characteristics that allowed it to become a pandemic that would be, to put it mildly, very bad.)

correct, that's what I'm trying to point out is that pandemic has nothing to do with severity. But when the media says "pandemic" the public reacts to an implied high severity

Reply on news.ycombinator.com