How the world can prevent another Covid-19

If only we’d listened to Dr Jonathan Quick, says Max King. In 2018, he explained how to stop a pandemic.

Pigs © Getty Images/iStockphoto
Could pigs transmit the next global virus to humans? © iStockphoto
(Image credit: Pigs © Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Many will have heard Bill Gates’s 2015 call to arms urging world leaders to prepare for a major pandemic. But scientists and epidemiologists have been making similar, more detailed warnings for years. These include Dr Jonathan Quick, who wrote The End of Epidemics, subtitled The looming threat to humanity and how to stop it (Scribe UK, £19), in 2018. It is a clear, concise and compelling analysis of the danger.

The fear that drove Dr Quick to write the book was Bill Gates’s prediction that a global outbreak like the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed 50-100 million people would happen again and that in the first 200 days it could kill 33 million. Bank of America argued that a severe pandemic could claim more than 300 million lives and reduce global GDP by between 5% and 10%. Yet such a pandemic is not inevitable. Quick sets out seven actions that could prevent it.

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Max King
Investment Writer

Max has an Economics degree from the University of Cambridge and is a chartered accountant. He worked at Investec Asset Management for 12 years, managing multi-asset funds investing in internally and externally managed funds, including investment trusts. This included a fund of investment trusts which grew to £120m+. Max has managed ten investment trusts (winning many awards) and sat on the boards of three trusts – two directorships are still active.

After 39 years in financial services, including 30 as a professional fund manager, Max took semi-retirement in 2017. Max has been a MoneyWeek columnist since 2016 writing about investment funds and more generally on markets online, plus occasional opinion pieces. He also writes for the Investment Trust Handbook each year and has contributed to The Daily Telegraph and other publications. See here for details of current investments held by Max.