Niall Ferguson – The Politics of Catastrophe

Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. Yet the responses of a number of developed countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why? Drawing from multiple disciplines, including history, economics, public health and network science, Niall Ferguson presents a global post mortem of the plague year.