

Bill Gates on Predictable Global Catastrophe - vinchuco
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/27/8660249/gates-flu-pandemic

======
T-A
> what's likeliest to kill more than 10 million human beings in the next 20
> years?

Looking for spikes in mortality charts may not be the best way to answer this
question.

Cancer currently kills more than 8 million people every single year [1].

Smoking currently kills almost 6 million people per year [2].

At the current rate, road traffic will kill 25 million people globally over
the next 20 years [3]. Maybe self-driving cars will reduce that significantly,
but given rapid urbanization and the prevalence of developing countries in the
data, I have my doubts.

You don't see any of these stand out in charts because they constitute a
smooth background, steadily reaping lives, year after year.

[1]
[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/)
[2]
[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/)
[3]
[http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_st...](http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2013/en/)

~~~
vinchuco
Correct. Spikes only present evidence that something may have occurred.

So the deaths during world wars could have been due to a flu pandemic, we will
never know ⸮.

The main point is that there are some processes which can grow at a faster
pace than we're prepared to control. Just like cancer.

