Originally Posted by rickair7777

There's kind of a fuzzy transition between Grey Rhino and Black Swan, and covid was probably right in the middle of that.

Obvious, likely, and realistic timeline play into that. We know there will be 500 year floods and earthquakes, but our building codes are typically for 100 year events despite the fact that there's a 20% chance of a 500-year event this century.

Politicians typically pay minimal lip service to those kinds of hypothetical threats because there's little political appetite in most places to spend money on responsible long-term considerations when you can be doling out social largess to various voting blocks. And they can usually play the odds that it won't happen on their watch. You'd almost need a benign dictatorship to adequately prepare for ALL eventualities... that's not going to be a popular fiscal platform.