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Comment by pmiller2 | Hacker News Reader

A pandemic is not a black swan event:

> Besides, the pandemic was wholly predictable—he, like Bill Gates, Laurie Garrett, and others, had predicted it—a white swan if ever there was one. “We issued our warning that, effectively, you should kill it in the egg,” Taleb told Bloomberg. Governments “did not want to spend pennies in January; now they are going to spend trillions.” [0]

Pandemics aren't some new thing. They've been happening probably since pathogens and parasites evolved, and they'll continue to happen as long as they exist.

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[0]: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-is...

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Yes, pandemics are to be expected. The impact and magnitude of response necessary for this one is not predictable. The last one that came close was over 100 years ago.

Yes, so that means it's well within the range of what should be expected, albeit probability weighted. This is a classic low probability, high impact event, which is precisely one of the things insurance is for.

Insurance systems are not good at dealing with highly correlated risks.

Insurance companies can only afford to pay out because not everyone files a claim at once.

"pandemic" is a big scary word that mostly describes the global distribution of a disease. The classical definition includes nothing about population immunity, virology or disease severity.

Ebola was/is a big deal for the past 45 years off an on.

Yep. Let’s not forget HIV. We’ve had several flu pandemics in the past 100 years, as well.

> Ebola was/is a big deal for the past 45 years off an on.

But never a pandemic (if Ebola retained it's deadliness and gained characteristics that allowed it to become a pandemic that would be, to put it mildly, very bad.)

correct, that's what I'm trying to point out is that pandemic has nothing to do with severity. But when the media says "pandemic" the public reacts to an implied high severity

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