Asteroids really are an easier problem: celestial mechanics in vacuum are pretty stable, we have the Moon providing a record of past cratering to calibrate on, etc. There’s still uncertainty about the technology of asteroid deflection (e.g. its potential for military use, or to incite conflict), but overall it’s perhaps the most tractable risk for analysis since the asteroids themselves don’t depend on recent events (save for some smallish anthropic shadow effects).
An analysis for engineered pathogens, where we have a lot of uncertainty about the difficulty of engineering various of diseases for maximum damage, and how the technology for detection, treatment and prevention will keep pace. We can make generalizations based on existing diseases and their evolutionary dynamics (selection for lower virulence over time with person-to-person transmission, etc), current public health measures, etc, the rarity of the relevant motivations, etc, but you’re still left with many more places where you can’t just plug in well-established numbers and crank forward.
You can still give probability estimates, and plug in well-understood past data where you can, but you can’t get asteroid-level exactitude.
Asteroids really are an easier problem: celestial mechanics in vacuum are pretty stable, we have the Moon providing a record of past cratering to calibrate on, etc. There’s still uncertainty about the technology of asteroid deflection (e.g. its potential for military use, or to incite conflict), but overall it’s perhaps the most tractable risk for analysis since the asteroids themselves don’t depend on recent events (save for some smallish anthropic shadow effects).
An analysis for engineered pathogens, where we have a lot of uncertainty about the difficulty of engineering various of diseases for maximum damage, and how the technology for detection, treatment and prevention will keep pace. We can make generalizations based on existing diseases and their evolutionary dynamics (selection for lower virulence over time with person-to-person transmission, etc), current public health measures, etc, the rarity of the relevant motivations, etc, but you’re still left with many more places where you can’t just plug in well-established numbers and crank forward.
You can still give probability estimates, and plug in well-understood past data where you can, but you can’t get asteroid-level exactitude.