Some Considerations on “Black Swan Theory”, COVID-19 and Involved Heuristics †

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the widespread claim – in scientific literature and mass-media - that COVID-19 constitutes an example of a “Black Swan”. This is an important feature in order to classify some rare events. Given the high speed of dissemination of information via mass-media and the Internet, with the possible consequences on the financial markets, it is relevant to ask whether this attribution is right or not. Thanks to more precise use of the different color definitions introduced by the famous researcher and our more explicit description of the relative properties, we show instead that the correct shade to be attributed to the Swan for this pandemic is gray. Besides, we also explain misclassification as the effect of some behavioral heuristics.