WASHINGTON, May 19 (UPI) -- There is nothing new or unprecedented in the scale of human suffering caused by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and last week's earthquake in southwest China. But they both teach the old lesson that Nature is far from benign.

Our predictions in UPI Analysis that the death toll in the two catastrophes would be far in excess of original reports was unfortunately confirmed in both cases. When the missing and feared dead estimates in Myanmar from its May 2-3 cyclone disaster are combined with the confirmed death toll, the entire number of those lost could be in excess of 130,000.

More than 40,000 people are now believed lost in the earthquake that devastated China's booming and densely populated Sichuan province. On Monday Chinese authorities said 34,073 people had been killed, with estimates of the final death toll looking close to 50,000. Another 220,000 people were injured.

One of the most chilling aspects of both disasters, however, is that neither was unprecedented. The cyclone toll in Myanmar probably will turn out in all to be around half the number of people who were killed by the tidal waves that swept the shores of the Indian Ocean and related areas in December 2004 -- a catastrophe that killed almost 230,000 people. That disaster resonated particularly heavily in Europe, because so many European holidaymakers at beach resorts in Thailand were among those killed.

Even as terrible cyclones go, the death toll in Myanmar last week was clearly much less than the tidal waves caused by cyclones that ravaged East Pakistan -- today the nation of Bangladesh -- in 1970, killing at least 300,000 people -- with some estimates going as high as a million fatalities.