The COVID-19 pandemic may be the deadliest viral outbreak the world has seen in more than a century. But statistically, such extreme events aren’t as rare as we may think, asserts a new analysis of novel disease outbreaks over the past 400 years.
The study, appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Aug. 23, used a newly assembled record of past outbreaks to estimate the intensity of those events and the yearly probability of them recurring.