IS COVID-19 A BLACK SWAN?

Nowadays we hear a lot about whether the COVID-19 is an actual BLACK SWAN event.  This means the Coronavirus is actually and totally unexpected, novel, and unpredictable. (Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2010) [2007]. The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable (2nd ed.). London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14103459-1.) In fact, every year we have a devastating virus attack, the flu.  It usually claims tens of thousands of lives. This year is no different. Yet, all we are told to get a flu shot.  That’s it!

This year we have COVID-19, a rather contagious virus not well understood.  It seems to claim more lives of the aged than for younger citizens. It’s scary.  It became more scary when China basically shut down an entire province of multiple millions.  People were dying all over the place. But it is not too scary because we’ve had similar deadly viruses attack us in past years.  (SARS, MERS, etc) This makes our current virus as a surprise but not unexpected.  Another will come along in a decade or so – sadly beyond the memory of governments to prepare for. 

Thus COVID-19 is not a black swan.  What is the black swan here is how we’ve reacted. Can anyone assure us with confidence that if China did not shut down Wuhan, other countries would not have shut down their cities (e.g. Florence, New York, and many more). The notion of physical separation seems totally dictatorial and fully unexpected. Ditto for shelter-in-place dictates. The mass lay-offs and business shutting are fully unexpected.  The indefinite length is unexpected.

Indefinite durations create massive uncertainty.  Uncertainty creates panic.  Panic engenders instability. And then comes the bad part.