The Wuhan Black Swan

By Corey Stapleton, Secretary of State

Many of us who have worked in the financial services sector are familiar with the term ‘Black Swan’. In essence, a black swan event is an unpredictable or unforeseen event—typically one with extreme consequences.

The virus called COVID-19, originating in Wuhan, China, is a black swan. It took less than three months to spread around the world, and the World Health Organization (WHO) named it a pandemic just a few days ago.

Everything is going well until it isn’t.

Black swans have a way of disrupting systems in almost unimaginable ways. Worldwide travel has come to a crawl, global markets have plummeted, healthcare systems are scrambling, and fear of the unknown has replaced the status quo. As humans, one price of living is working together to best contain these invisible germs, lest we forget how fragile we are.

Montana has still been relatively unaffected by the bug, but the Wuhan virus is likely to be here soon. The Governor initiated a coronavirus task force last week, and our hospitals are getting their ‘A’ game ready in anticipation of treating coronavirus patients.

Still, the turn of events is breathtaking.

At the Office of the Secretary of State, we serve people. Lots of them. 200,000 businesses and 700,000 voters. We’ll continue to serve our business customers, government customers and work with our county election administrators to run great elections in this important election year. (Perhaps with more hand sanitizer around, though!)

Be safe. Keep your distance. Stay clean.