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All these people predicting cataclysmic change because of the Coronavirus are missing the fact that this all happened multiple times already, including barely a

All these people predicting cataclysmic change because of the Coronavirus are missing the fact that this all happened multiple times already, including barely a century before. The Spanish Flu went and wiped ~4% of the world population, including the young, right after civilization spent the last 4 years shooting at each other in trenches. The result of all this? America and Europe experienced an age of economic prosperity known as the Roaring Twenties, with any radical government changes attributed to war debt over anything the flu did

teambayleaf 7y ago
Also 1968 Flu pandemic killed 1 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu Different perspective. AIDS was (and still is) definitely much much scarier infection than COVID-19, but yet it did not fundamentally change how our society operates.
- kelchm 7y ago
  You’re right — it’s also worth reflecting on the fact that tuberculosis killed 1.5 million people in 2018 [1]. [1]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi...
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  It was easy to avoid AIDS (unless you needed a blood transfusion) and, as a result, not many people in the west ever got AIDS as a result. AIDS is nothing like this pandemic, in other words.
lowdose 7y ago
That was probably because it freed up a lot of capital of old people. The people inheriting money would spend it and hence a natural cause for an economic boom. The Spanish flu would have taken both Donald Trump and Joe Bidden.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  It's a sad thing to think that a lot of death could really change the world for better. But you should remember that the 1918 flu killed young people more frequently. Covid19 could be killing old people more than young of course, that's a different thing.
sjg007 7y ago
People have to vote that's the only way we will get change.
- LeoTinnitus 7y ago
  Or revolt. Voting does nothing when the government has financial backers. 100,000 people on the governor's doorstep ready to riot will get bipartisan legislation instilled immediately. The civil rights movement was obviously non violent. However, the unrest, economic effects, and disruption FORCED LBJ, a Democrat who really didn't want it to happen, signing that legislation. Voting in the US is a joke. No minority opinion survives in politics ever. If you go against the grain, you get forced out by other people.
  - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
    You are wrong in your characterization of lbj on this. He schemed for years to get his great society stuff passed and he supported the civil rights act. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Johnson's_appeal_to_Congress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Joh... It doesn't always take riots for great changes, maybe sometimes. Voting different leaders in, over time, that can change things.
  - csomar 7y ago
    > 100,000 people on the governor's doorstep ready to riot will get bipartisan legislation instilled immediately. That doesn't sound like democracy.
    - t-writescode 7y ago
      The assumption made here is that democracy is always good.
      - ferzul 7y ago
        democracy is better because in extreme situations it works. the u.s. is not exactly a democracy tho, because it is so hard for a third party to be viable it's practically illegal. fptp doesn't do that - see canada, india, the u.k. it's a deliberate choice by the powerful to prevent them from having to listen to the weak - which is exactly the point of democracy.
PoachedSausage 7y ago
I'm not sure that you can compare the global economic system of 100 years ago to today. Everything is much more tightly interconnected and we have consistently optimised for efficiency at the expense of resilience. We apparently did not learn from the 2008 financial crisis and are probably even less resilient. We are still represented by Figure 2, graph B of [0]. [0] Options for Managing a Systemic Bank Crisis https://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/747 https://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/747
- mdoroo93 7y ago
  Financial truth is merely ideology Past societies have legislated it away, soberly realizing the literal agency of people matters more than conformity to emotional gamesmanship of men with little imagination but “watch me trick people into idolatry with appeals to authoritative knowledge they can’t verify cause we won’t educate them!”
  - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
    We are really failing at this right now.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ggm 7y ago
Servants as a routine function in society went into a terminal decline after WWI. Women got the vote as a result of the social change of WWI. Arguably, public health initiatives worldwide got a massive kick from Spanish Flu. cataclysmic ? no. But then, 1917-1919 and the russian revolution...
thomaskcr 7y ago
Things are significantly more just in time than they were then. Companies hold debt, minimize cash, and minimize inventory, optimizing for efficiency and not robustness and this is an event well outside the likely operating parameters of even the most conservative and careful finance teams. My grandparents used to do their shopping monthly, they had a store room, they had a crazy amount of food. Until recently I went shopping a couple times a week. Companies have been doing a similar thing -- once all the inventory is gone, the cash has paid salaries and you can't get a loan to rebuy (your suppliers are in a similar boat anyway) what do you even do? That's going to be the issue with getting things rolling again if this goes on long enough to kill off a large percentage. Right now, the weakest/newest companies are being culled and people arent really noticing - the BKs will get bigger with each passing week - most companies just aren't set up to run like this and starting back up could be a challenge. (I fully expect another massive stimulus/SBA program to be needed after a solution to this exists, I think they shot their shot on companies too early and should have focused on individual relief and just allowed the normal debt/BK cycle to play out - were just making the bubble a bit bigger in my opinion).
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  This. It’s hard to understand how devastating going to zero cash flow is for most companies unless you spend a lot of time thinking about balance sheets. It’s way outside the bounds of what virtually any company plans for.
meowface 7y ago
The Spanish Flu is a bad example: a pandemic that infected 500 million people wasn't even the leading story due to everyone being engulfed in an extremely brutal war. The consequences in the aftermath can't be separated out.

teambayleaf 7y ago

Also 1968 Flu pandemic killed 1 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu Different perspective. AIDS was (and still is) definitely much much scarier infection than COVID-19, but yet it did not fundamentally change how our society operates.

kelchm 7y ago
You’re right — it’s also worth reflecting on the fact that tuberculosis killed 1.5 million people in 2018 [1]. [1]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi...
toasterlovin 7y ago
It was easy to avoid AIDS (unless you needed a blood transfusion) and, as a result, not many people in the west ever got AIDS as a result. AIDS is nothing like this pandemic, in other words.

lowdose 7y ago

That was probably because it freed up a lot of capital of old people. The people inheriting money would spend it and hence a natural cause for an economic boom. The Spanish flu would have taken both Donald Trump and Joe Bidden.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
It's a sad thing to think that a lot of death could really change the world for better. But you should remember that the 1918 flu killed young people more frequently. Covid19 could be killing old people more than young of course, that's a different thing.

sjg007 7y ago

People have to vote that's the only way we will get change.

LeoTinnitus 7y ago
Or revolt. Voting does nothing when the government has financial backers. 100,000 people on the governor's doorstep ready to riot will get bipartisan legislation instilled immediately. The civil rights movement was obviously non violent. However, the unrest, economic effects, and disruption FORCED LBJ, a Democrat who really didn't want it to happen, signing that legislation. Voting in the US is a joke. No minority opinion survives in politics ever. If you go against the grain, you get forced out by other people.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  You are wrong in your characterization of lbj on this. He schemed for years to get his great society stuff passed and he supported the civil rights act. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Johnson's_appeal_to_Congress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Joh... It doesn't always take riots for great changes, maybe sometimes. Voting different leaders in, over time, that can change things.
- csomar 7y ago
  > 100,000 people on the governor's doorstep ready to riot will get bipartisan legislation instilled immediately. That doesn't sound like democracy.
  - t-writescode 7y ago
    The assumption made here is that democracy is always good.
    - ferzul 7y ago
      democracy is better because in extreme situations it works. the u.s. is not exactly a democracy tho, because it is so hard for a third party to be viable it's practically illegal. fptp doesn't do that - see canada, india, the u.k. it's a deliberate choice by the powerful to prevent them from having to listen to the weak - which is exactly the point of democracy.

PoachedSausage 7y ago

I'm not sure that you can compare the global economic system of 100 years ago to today. Everything is much more tightly interconnected and we have consistently optimised for efficiency at the expense of resilience. We apparently did not learn from the 2008 financial crisis and are probably even less resilient. We are still represented by Figure 2, graph B of [0]. [0] Options for Managing a Systemic Bank Crisis https://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/747 https://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/747

mdoroo93 7y ago
Financial truth is merely ideology Past societies have legislated it away, soberly realizing the literal agency of people matters more than conformity to emotional gamesmanship of men with little imagination but “watch me trick people into idolatry with appeals to authoritative knowledge they can’t verify cause we won’t educate them!”
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  We are really failing at this right now.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

ggm 7y ago

Servants as a routine function in society went into a terminal decline after WWI. Women got the vote as a result of the social change of WWI. Arguably, public health initiatives worldwide got a massive kick from Spanish Flu. cataclysmic ? no. But then, 1917-1919 and the russian revolution...

thomaskcr 7y ago

Things are significantly more just in time than they were then. Companies hold debt, minimize cash, and minimize inventory, optimizing for efficiency and not robustness and this is an event well outside the likely operating parameters of even the most conservative and careful finance teams. My grandparents used to do their shopping monthly, they had a store room, they had a crazy amount of food. Until recently I went shopping a couple times a week. Companies have been doing a similar thing -- once all the inventory is gone, the cash has paid salaries and you can't get a loan to rebuy (your suppliers are in a similar boat anyway) what do you even do? That's going to be the issue with getting things rolling again if this goes on long enough to kill off a large percentage. Right now, the weakest/newest companies are being culled and people arent really noticing - the BKs will get bigger with each passing week - most companies just aren't set up to run like this and starting back up could be a challenge. (I fully expect another massive stimulus/SBA program to be needed after a solution to this exists, I think they shot their shot on companies too early and should have focused on individual relief and just allowed the normal debt/BK cycle to play out - were just making the bubble a bit bigger in my opinion).

toasterlovin 7y ago
This. It’s hard to understand how devastating going to zero cash flow is for most companies unless you spend a lot of time thinking about balance sheets. It’s way outside the bounds of what virtually any company plans for.

meowface 7y ago

The Spanish Flu is a bad example: a pandemic that infected 500 million people wasn't even the leading story due to everyone being engulfed in an extremely brutal war. The consequences in the aftermath can't be separated out.