Niall Ferguson, Columnist

The World’s Cascade of Disasters Is Not a Coincidence

A pandemic, fires, floods, popular unrest — it’s an intertwined pattern seen throughout history and even in the Bible.

Plagued.

Photographer: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

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“It never rains, but what it pours,” sang Judy Garland to Mickey Rooney in 1938, memorably describing what happens “if Lady Luck should happen to desert you.”

“The same thing happens in life,” the song goes on. “But on a very much larger scale.”