[gravy boat]

Agree. So let's say the "Big One" comes in the next month - perhaps the Cascadian subduction zone ( a magnitude 9.0 event happened in 1700) or one of the numerous faults through CA. Are we prepared? How do you prepare for something that may or may not happen in your lifetime - with absolutely no firm data indicating the date or severity? Yes, pandemics and natural disasters happen - but predicting and preparing for all of them is the challenge.

Originally Posted by Lakegeezer

We tend to ignore warnings. On a personal level, many ignore the warnings about smoking, overeating, lack of exercise and the list could go on. As a collective, warnings about big things, like earthquakes, stock markets and pandemics. The attitude seems to be "deal with it if and when it comes". Will we change? Probably not.

Many are warning about the impact of climate change, yet at the personal and collective levels, most plan to deal with it if and when it comes. If climate predictions come true, we'll be posting videos of famous people crying out the warning from as far back as the 1970's, wondering why nobody did anything about it. That's the way we are.

The world didn't prepare for a pandemic. We saved a lot of money that way. But, here it is, so now we have to deal with it. It would have been a lot cheaper to prepare for it, but who knew?