Cyreenik Says
In February we had Covid-19 spread outside China and the WHO declared it a pandemic. In August we had a warehouse in Beirut filled with ammonium nitrate fertilizer blow up and destroy the city center. In both cases (and many others) after the disaster happened lots of people started complaining about why the disaster wasn't prevented before it happened.
The answer in both these cases is that they were just one of a million possible disaster scenarios which could happen, but won't -- just one in a million will happen. This is why prevention efforts would be a waste of resources.
The converse situation is one where a disaster is routine, it happens often. A good example of this is car accidents. It is the routine nature of car accidents which makes equipping all cars with seat belts a good idea.
So, is a potential disaster one in a million or routine? This determines how to treat preventive efforts relating to it.
This 13 Aug 20 WSJ article, A Deadly Coronavirus Was Inevitable. Why Was No One Ready? by Betsy McKay and Phred Dvorak, talks about this in the Covid-19 context. From the article "Scientists warned of a pandemic for decades, yet when Covid-19 arrived, the world had few resources and little understanding."
This Wikipedia article, 2020 Beirut explosions, talks about the Beirut disaster. From the article, "By order of the judge, the cargo was brought ashore in 2014 and placed in Warehouse 12 at the port, where it remained for the next six years."
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