It means if one was asked to bet on an event between 100k death from a virus outbreak and 100k death from climate change, one would place their bet largely on climate change. Even though we have been warned the hidden systemic risk of pandemic preparedness l.
Virus / bacteria outbreaks have been common throughout history. They come quickly and often enough. About 3 or 4 come every 100 years. So you can expect one every 30 years.
Our last 4:
"Spanish Flu" in 1918-1919
"Asian Flu" in 1957-1958
"Hong Kong Flu" in 1968-1969
"Swine Flu" (H1N1) in 2009-2010
History teaches us to bet on viruses happening at anytime. Climate change deaths will be much slowier
Source? A quick google search would suggest that around 70% of Americans agree that climate change is real. That's way too low, but still a solid majority.
According to an UN poll, 65% of Americans and 64% of the world think that climate change is a global emergency [1]. In every questioned country, a majority said it's a global emergency.
Did these UN polls consider that people holding these views might not answer to UN polls? I encourage you to try looking for how these questions were answered in polls done by local researchers. At least in Europe, the ratios are the other way around all around the eastern half. In my own country, less than 30% believe climate change is a risk, and even less believe it's caused and/or resolvable by humans - I'm surprised the UN polls say otherwise as not even the EU dares to claim these amounts of approval. Perhaps the UN asked for "any climate change whatsoever" as opposed to "human-driven climate change" - a significant difference...
What does that even mean?