You don’t think having almost every major metropolitan area in the world under some degree of reduced economic activity for 1-3 months qualifies as a Black Swan event? What does, then?
From the website of the woman who coined the term - Michele Wucker [0]:
""" A “gray rhino” is a highly probable, high impact yet neglected threat: kin to both the elephant in the room and the improbable and unforeseeable black swan. Gray rhinos are not random surprises, but occur after a series of warnings and visible evidence. The bursting of the housing bubble in 2008, the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters, the new digital technologies that upended the media world, the fall of the Soviet Union…all were evident well in advance. """
COVID-19 is unequivocally a Black Swan.
Hopefully, we get a CDC 'mini Army' like Korea/Taiwan have so this doesn't happen again.
The difficult part isn't getting a 'mini Army' after a crisis, it's keeping it until the next crisis, against all the beancounters that will soon swoop down and try to optimize it away.
But this time, there is a) political impetus and b) economic calculus.
The plebes will 'vote' for this now, it's something ingrained into an entire generation now.
Banks, regulators, government - they all have crystal clear economic justification.
Large financial institutions, definitely insurance, funds etc. will now integrate all of this into their calculus. So even 'big business' will be on board.
Large banks will pressure governments that don't have a Pandemic Response time.
The elite and plebes are now on board with the 'Pandemic Army' so I suggest it will exist in some, more meaningful fashion.
It might not be 'the best' but it will exist.
So yes, as you say, a black swan event is allowed to be something that is in the realm of possibility. But it has to be improbable. And it has to be something unforeseeable by people knowledgeable in the field. COVID-19 does not pass either of those tests; it definitely is not a black swan event.
A pandemic scenario was modeled/tested just last year [1]. Some participating states appear to have learned from it, other not so much.
'Some guy, somewhere predicted the 2008 crash, therefore, it should have been obvious'
People have been running 'pandemic' simulations forever, this is not a new idea.
There are multitudes of catastrophic scenarios we could face.
Pandemics that break out at this level are probably 'once in several generations' (at least pre-full globalization) which implies effective 'Black Swan'.
The next pandemic may be in 20 or 200 years, nobody knows, hence 'Black Swan'.
It was a study that lasted for months and involved the US Fed Gov plus 12 states. This isn't one talking head spouting their pet theories on their blog, then later turned out to be correct.
The US military runs China-US engagement scenarios all the time, of a variety of flavours i.e. S. China sea flare-up, Tawian invasions etc. You know we are running Europe/WW3/Russian nuclear standoff drills and simulations - all the time, right? Any one of those scenarios is very unlikely to happen, but somewhere in the world, something similar will happen.
The Fed and large banks constantly 'stress testing' and producing models for relatively unpredictable things?
Insurance companies are constantly doing fairly complex modelling built with really good data?
And academia is rife with all of those activities.
After the 2008 crises, there would have been an easy handful of individuals of credibility who were predicting much of what happened. Dot-com crash. 9/11. Saddam's Invasion of Iraq. If there's any likelihood at all of something happening, someone is talking about it in a meaningful way.
No - this is not true at all.
1) All of the major economic calamities were 'predicted by someone' in the field.
2) Black Swans are 'improbable' - which COVID absolutely is.
"According to Taleb, black swans are events that emerge unpredictably, like a tornado, from a fat-tailed statistical distribution."
What we are seeing is point-blank exemplary of 'Black Swan'.
And if a nuclear war broke out, that'd hardly be unexpected or random.
"Black Swan" does not mearly mean "unique and significant". The unpredictability of a black swan event is the main cause of concern, as it doesn't allow for much preparation.