[The Guardian] What if Covid-19 isn't our biggest threat?

What if Covid-19 isn't our biggest threat?

Experts who assess global peril saw a pandemic coming, but they have worse worries for humanity

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When eventually the coronavirus crisis begins to recede and we return to an approximation of normality – no matter how socially distanced or how much handwashing it involves – we can expect some kind of international initiative to prevent, or at least limit, the spread of future lethal viruses. As a species we are pretty good at learning from recent experience. It’s what’s known as the availability heuristic – the tendency to estimate the likelihood of an event based on our ability to recall examples.

But as the moral philosopher Toby Ord argues in his new book, The Precipice, we are much less adept at anticipating potential catastrophes that have no precedent in living memory. “Even when experts estimate a significant probability for an unprecedented event,” he writes, “we have great difficulty believing it until we see it.”

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