This pandemic isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary

Image CC-BY-NC Warrior Squirrel

Early in the days of COVID-19, as it was just starting to leave the confines of East Asia, a number of people I know started calling the then-emergent pandemic a “black swan event.” This is a metaphor for something very rare and difficult to predict. It would be a fitting one if COVID-19 was like the Spanish Flu — a once in a century event that wreaks havoc and then is quickly forgotten. It’s…