There are three characteristics of a “black swan” event: rarity, extreme impact and retrospective predictability. With the benefit of hindsight it is always easy to spot the warning signs of a looming catastrophe, but few see them at the time.
The financial crisis of 2008 was an example of a black swan, and Covid-19 is an even better one. Around this time of the year, economists tend to make predictions of what the next 12 months have in store. Some like to think outside the box and come up with whacky forecasts of unlikely events that will perhaps come to pass.
Suffice it to say not one crystal-ball gazer a year ago foresaw that by December 2020 Christmas would be banned by government edict, pubs shuttered and Premier League football matches played in grounds devoid of spectators. Nobody said 2020 was going to be a plague year that would lead to more than 1.8 million deaths worldwide and bring about the biggest annual contraction of the UK economy since the Great Frost of…
— to www.theguardian.com
