The term "black swan" was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Teleb in his book by the same name.  It is taken to mean an unpredictable event that's beyond what can normally be expected and that has a high impact. To put it another way, black swans are characterized by their extreme rarity and their severe impact.  Looking at a black swan event in retrospect, however, it can be seen that the danger was always present but never sufficiently hedged against beforehand. The coronavirus that broke out in China is a black swan event.  Nobody saw this virus coming, yet it shouldn't have been a surprise.  China is the world's premier incubator of new infectious flu strains.  Health experts blame China for the 1918–19 "Spanish flu,"1957's Asian flu, the Hong Hong flu of 1968, the Russian flu of 1997, and the more recent SARS outbreak of 2003. Now that this viral black swan has landed, here are...(Read Full Post)