Reading The Economist’s considered article on swine flu today reminded me of Nassim Taleb’s warning in ‘The Black Swan’ about how reading a daily newspaper is, at best, a waste of time, at worst, utterly self-defeating if you want to know what’s really going on. Being too close to a story, especially one on a subject as potentially devasting as a flu pandemic, means we fail to get a sense of perspective. We don’t see the wood for the trees. I’m a sucker for rolling news but when it’s a complicated, emotionally charged issue, the thud of The Economist on my doormat means that at last I’m going to get a bit of clarity.