Like Nothing You’ve Ever Seen

[bigsky]

We are in a recession. California just closed down. You might get arrested there if you are out in the street.. People in my town are open carrying. Manufacturing is closing down. New York is about to close down. Whole industries and companies have closed and laid everyone off. The projections for “the curve” flattening also contain, “reinfection”. We won’t get out of the free fall until there is a vaccine. That just stops the free fall! Not the downward economic effects.

We will not “return to normal” meaning pre-Chinese flu normal. I think we will see fundamental changes in society as a result of this pandemic, a relatively mild pandemic. Because

A,) people will be waiting for the next one.Especially millennials burned now by two unprecedented economic disasters.
B) some institutions have failed. Particularly universities. Tossing everyone in dorms off campus and into the street was egregious behavior. At MSU they would not let renters pick up their personal belongings.
C) Generational war will accelerate. My great pension and SS income will be obvious in the upcoming depression. This will lead to caps on both, and distributions to the other generations of “guaranteed income”.

And a lot more. I hope to hear your predictions. Remember the greatest generation aversion to debt, waste, throwing anything away? Current young generations are going to absorb this for the rest of their lives.

[Catfan73]

Stephen Hawking predicted that humans will be wiped out, either by A.I., a pandemic, an asteroid, or catastrophic climate change, by the year 2100. We’ll all be gone by then. My son would be 98 if he makes it that long but what about any children and grandchildren he might have?

In order to survive even if none of those things come to pass, I think society is going to have to undergo some fundamental changes away from one of consumerism to one better prepared to deal with the catastrophes to come.

[CitizenBBN]

I hope we realize the need to change policy to insure we make everything in this country that we fundamentally need.

Otherwise we'll be OK. going to be a crappy spring and a better but not fun summer, by fall we'll have vaccines and we'll start back to life.

The Spanish Flu didn't change the fundamental nature of the nation or humanity and it wiped out VASTLY more people and endured far longer than this probably will, so history says this will work out OK, just going to be ugly for a while.

This is Spanish Flu Lite, with far better medical facilities and vastly better communication and data. Going to suck, but not going to see some tectonic shift in the way people behave. Hell, endless centuries of war and disaster hasn't changed our fundamental behavior one iota really, so this sure isn't going to move the mountain. We'll still be the same largely idiotic, selfish bunch of yahoos we've always been. lol.

Seriously, how many people even knew about the Spanish flu before this? In history class when you study WWI it barely gets a mention it had so little impact on the course of human behavior and events, despite millions dying.

[kingcat]

In the middle of all the serious concern I share with everyone, I also have great hope.
I can see it in the eyes of my two grandchildren who are staying with Nana and me tonight. It reminds me that, we have done nothing that should have brought about such great and marvelous things. The sun, the moon, planets, and the universe all still exist in harmony with each other. The earth still rotates and its gravity still holds us down. The oceans still are there for harvesting and the crops can still grow.
The living creatures go about their business in the same manor they did when I was a child.

And here I sit, talking to good friends I likely would have never met except for a technology that as I see it..really always existed, yet undiscovered. Amazing!
And the same goes for many, many wonderful things we often seem to take for granted or are yet to be discovered.

Really, great advances in medicine by the grace of God is all that separates me from sitting here typing to being no more than a memory or a statistic.
And we have really done nothing to merit it except hope and believe. And the older I get the more certain I am that there is something much bigger than what we see which has been, and is now, at work.

My friends, there is no chance that someone, much greater than mankind, didn't set us out on this path of discovery and adventure. Now, whether it's the time God has appointed to reveal everything to us, or just another hurdle to overcome, I cant say. But I do have lots of hope today for all of us here.

We really did nothing to get to this point but keep moving forward facing everything life presents us head on. And I have great hope for tomorrow.
God bless us all.

[ukpumacat]

Otherwise we'll be OK. going to be a crappy spring and a better but not fun summer.

I agree with this. I think by May, so many people will have been infected that it won’t make sense for businesses to be closed.

The average time period of the curve tends to be 6-8 weeks. Ours might take a bit longer because “flattening it” will drag it out.
We are basically two weeks into it. So I am guessing in 4-6 weeks we will see life start to go back to normal.
Millions will likely have it. Thousands will have died. But I do think life will resume pretty quickly.
Can small businesses last that long? Likely not some of them. Let’s hope we bounce back quickly.

[MickintheHam]

We have to realize extreme measures are being taken to get the attention of the American people that behavior has to change. But any measure being taken will be short lived. To enforce measures for any length of time will lead to anarchy. The test for the Trump administration will be to know when to relax the emergency measures.