We don't have to focus on every crisis. The context here is zoonotic spillover, which has killed millions of people historically, and it keeps happening again and again.
It's still okay that we didn't listen to experts like this last time. But this serves as a good wake up call. Avian flu didn't wake us. Swine flu didn't wake us. We were distracted when Spanish Flu came around. But let's not have this repeat too many times.
This line of reasoning is really just silly for a number of reasons.
For starters, preparing for every crisis that could potentially eventuate, even for just a single category of crisis, would still come at the opportunity cost of doing anything else at all.
Also, what’s so special about spillovers? People suffer and die from all sorts of things every day.
Finally, what lessons do you expect people to learn from past spillover events? To not have contact with any non-human organisms? Spillovers happen all the time. Most human viruses come from other animals. Is it reasonable to expect we can predict which infections, out of the millions of spillover infections that occur ever year, are going to cause a crisis? Or predict when a typically self-limiting spillover infection is going to unexpectedly pick up a new transmission route? Or should all sickness be treated as if it were ground zero for the next pandemic until proven otherwise?
It's still okay that we didn't listen to experts like this last time. But this serves as a good wake up call. Avian flu didn't wake us. Swine flu didn't wake us. We were distracted when Spanish Flu came around. But let's not have this repeat too many times.