Hacker News Reader

Black Swan events are unknown unknowns. White swan events are known unknowns. Pandemics are White Swan events.

So by your reasoning, a large asteroid discovered to hit earth a month from now would be a white swan event, because we always knew it could happen.

An asteroid is definitionally a Grey Swan. Very unlikely to happen, and of great impact, but still considered possible. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grey-swan.asp

COVID-19s impact wasn't nearly unpredictable or unprecedented enough to be defined as a Black Swan imo. I did know many people both in real life and online who were concerned about it before the impact, considerably different from e.g. 2008 financial crisis.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com