Is the ‘devil virus’ a ‘black swan’?

A black swan is an unforeseen event that has a huge impact on the normal course of events. The SARS epidemic in 2002-03 was a black swan: it knocked about two percentage points off China’s economic growth that year.

President Xi Jinping, pictured in 2015, is no longer claiming that he is 'personally commanding' the anti-virus fight. If this is going to be a complete disaster, somebody else should take the blame.Photograph courtesy of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

February 10, 2020

LONDON, U.K.—China officially went back to work on Monday, after an extended two-week Lunar New Year holiday, while the authorities struggled to get the spread of the new coronavirus under control. But a lot of Chinese are not going back to work yet, and the spread ...

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