Wreckage (2020 in Review)

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From Kristine Kathryn Rusch:

I have considered writing this short series for more than a month now, and every time I envision it, I see myself standing in a pile of rubble, surveying the landscape. It’s almost a movie scene, probably an amalgam of every disaster movie I’ve ever seen.

The camera focuses on a small section of rubble, which moves every so slightly. Then a hand emerges, nearly obscured by dust. The hand grabs a sharp edge of concrete, and holds tight. More debris moves, and a person eases out, so covered in dirt that every part of them—body, face, clothes, shoes—are all the same color.

. . . .

Amidst it all, though, are intact buildings, beacons of light. Hospitals, overwhelmed like they are in a war zone, are still functioning. Helicopters fly overhead. People, most as dusty as the person the camera started with, are digging through the rubble, not the way that survivors of earthquakes do—desultorily searching for their belongings—but the way that construction workers do, clearing the rubble so that they can rebuild.

Somewhere in between, something the camera doesn’t catch, are all the rescue workers, combing the ruins carefully, trying to find survivors, anything that remains of their lives.

Somewhere in between, something the camera doesn’t catch, are all the rescue workers, combing the ruins carefully, trying to find survivors, anything that remains of their lives.

I wrote some stories—most in my Faerie Justice series—about Europe after World War II. The photos from that time keep coming up in my head: there’s a semblance of normal life, even in 1946, just after the war ended, but the backdrop is always ruin. There are streets, piled with rubble the way that streets in winter are bracketed by snowbanks.

Frankly, it was those pictures and that history which has gotten me through the past ten months. History is all about human resiliency. Terrible stuff happens, and people climb out of it. They rebuild. They create something new and fresh.

. . . .

I suspect that after this horrible year, we will all have those same kinds of images in our minds. We don’t even know what we’ve lost yet. We’re still in the midst of the crisis. Here in the U.S., people are dying at an alarming rate—more than in 9/11 every single day. The hospitals are at capacity, and in some cases over capacity, and still idiots refuse to believe this virus is real. They refuse to wear masks, refuse to social distance, and refuse to alter their behavior one iota.

But…the vaccine is here. Distribution has started. I figure that by summer, we will all be vaccinated. (And if you come on here and argue against the vaccine, well, I just feel sorry for you and your family. The world is offering you hope, and you’re spitting all over it, preferring to get sick and die. How very sad.)

We are emerging, one finger at a time, from the worst of the crisis. And then we’re going to have to stand on the piles of our own personal rubble and see what remains.

. . . .

We can’t rebuild until we have combed through the wreckage. And most of us (all of us?) don’t know what’s beneath the surface right now.

Twice today, I have seen that very idea float past me. The first time in a CNN.com article about the way that people are losing friends and family in this crisis—not just to sickness and death, but to disagreements about how to behave. In the article, a therapist, Jeff Guenther, said that relationships may be affected forever after the pandemic, and added this:

If that’s the case … that’s one of the many traumas to come out of 2020 that we don’t even fully know about yet.

. . . .

So, as I prepare to review 2020, I really can’t wrap my arms around the entirety of this crisis. We don’t know the entirety of it. All we know is that there is the bright light of hope off in the distance. That’s a vaccinated future, where we can hug our friends and families again.

What I’m going to do in the next few weeks, and that includes over the holidays, is look at segments of the industry, and see if they changed at all or if there will be some long-term impact.

Because, as I said, there are bright spots in the rubble. Or at least, survivable spots. Some places are even making money.

Link to the rest at Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Here’s a link to Kris Rusch’s books. If you like the thoughts Kris shares, you can show your appreciation by checking out her books.

One thing that PG has learned from reading a lot of history from the 19th and 20th centuries is that, without minimizing the pain and suffering that many individuals experience during and following major and difficult disruptions in their lives, humanity as a whole displays an extraordinary resilience following disasters.

After having their economies and infrastructure destroyed and losing many talented and productive young men in World War II, Japan and Germany experienced an astounding economic rebound that began 5-10 years after the end of the war. (The difference between East and West Germany, North and South Korea and Hong Kong/Taiwan and the remainder of China demonstrate that systems of government and their resultant cultures have a substantial impact on post-war recoveries.)

PG hopes and expects that the post-Covid world will see a similar recovery.

19 thoughts on “Wreckage (2020 in Review)”

  1. Not everybody is dealing with “just” COVID.
    Some places are dealing with actual rubble.
    Puerto Rico was starting to recover from back to back hurricanes, including a category 5, when a major quake hit on an unexpected fault in January. The follow up continue to this day. Piles of rubble are real.

    A stretch of the Texas Louisiana saw three hurricanes and two storms back to back to back, the gulf coast saw eight named storms and hurricanes. Destruction rivals a WWII bombing run.

    As of December 12, 2020, over 9,639 fires have burned 4,359,517 acres more than 4% of the state’s roughly 100 million acres of land, making 2020 the largest wildfire season recorded in California’s modern history (according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection), though roughly equivalent to the pre-1800 levels which averaged around 4.4 million acres yearly and up to 12 million in peak years. California’s August Complex fire wildfire has been labeled as the first “gigafire” as the fires have gone beyond 1m Acres. The fire has now crossed seven counties and has been labeled as larger than the state of Rhode Island.

    And those are just some of the more notable natural disasters (minus tornadoes and flooding) without counting the human-spawned wreckage from COVID, riots, incompetent government officials, etc.

    If we never again see a year like 2020 it will be too soon.
    And it will be years before we can reasonably tally up the fallout.

  2. The hospitals are at capacity, and in some cases over capacity, and still idiots refuse to believe this virus is real.

    Name of someone who denies the virus is real?

  3. After having their economies and infrastructure destroyed and losing many talented and productive young men in World War II, Japan and Germany experienced an astounding economic rebound that began 5-10 years after the end of the war.

    The same happened after the Black Death in the 1300s. One can make a plausible case that European economic dominance of the world started with the recovery that began in 1365. One third of Europe died, but the survivors and subsequent generations did much better than before the plague.

    There was the same amount of land, livestock, tools, equipment, and buildings. But only two thirds of the previous population. Lords tried to keep wages down, but the economic pressure couldn’t be stopped.

    So English government stepped in to bring order to society with the Statute of Laborers decreeing all working men must accept employment from anyone who wanted his labor, and do it at wages from 1346. Matching price controls were decreed for retailers.

    The government failed, wages went up, wage competition led to workers leaving their home villages for other higher-paying areas. Leaving the home village shifted serfs to freemen. Lack of labor caused lords to switch from labor intensive grains to more livestock, improving diets. God Bless free markets, for they work.

    Can’t help thinking of 1365 when I see all the legislation designed to solve the current virus problems.

    • This is mostly a test of the comments system; disregard if you like. Are you saying you’re expecting economic boons from the “solutions” to the virus right now?

      • FWIW, that’s how I read it.
        And I agree.
        The pandemic is accelerating pre-existent trends in a lot of areas, validating new techs and business models. People have learned new behaviors. These things won’t be unlearded soon, if ever. (Think of the Great Depression survivors, how tbeir lives were colored by that disaster.)

        Look to the mRNA tech behind the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines; it has been under development for 20 years but the urgency of the pandemic and the guaranteed money from OPERATION WARP SPEED allowed production to start during Phase III testing instead of after approval. The Moderna vaccine itself was created in two weeks; the rest of the wait was testing and validation. The underlying tech is now validated,it won’t go away. The door is open to a “universal” Influenza vaccine, to personalized “vaccines” to treat cancers by priming the immune system against cancerous cells. Everybody thought it would take years to get an answer to COVID; it was done in months.

        Or look to the boom in streaming services as a response to the closure of entertainment venues; theaters were already in trouble because of the arrival of cheap high quality large TVs (65″ 4K HDR sets *listing* under $460?) and people choosing to wait out theaters’ exclusivity window. Now that exclusivity is withering, 17 days for UNIVERSAL movies, zero for WB, starting this week. The model will evolve and IMAX isn’t going away, but multiplexes? Drive-ins used to be everywhere…

        Retailers have (finally!) embraced online ordering/in-store pickup. The efficiencies of that business model will lead to a rethinking of retail that was already mandated by the “retail apocalypse”.

        And, of course, tbere is the remote workforce interaction tech underlying work from home.
        Work from home, as an employee option, will be all over, but even more disruptive will be the unwinding or corporate hubs; massive centralized campuses (Apple’s “spaceship”) will give way to linked satellite facilities spread across a region or even nationally. After all, it won’t matter if the employees are working in cubicles in massive (and massively expensive) centralized complexes or a dozen small sites in tech parks all over, often close to actual production facilities. Less overhead for the company, shorter commutes/cheaper housing/better auality of life outside work for employees.

        https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-amazon-google-and-facebook-spent-billions-on-sparkling-new-offices-now-theyre-nearly-empty/

        The mall apocalypse is nothing compared to the office space restructuring underway.

        All these, and many more changes, are shifting resources from less productive channels/business models, usually reducing overhead costs, and boosting productivity and profits. Think of the PC economic boom that saw US productivity explode vdrsus countries (cough*Europe*cough) where the legacy business dragged their feet sticking to their dated business model.

        The pandemic has validated new techs and business models…
        …and policies.
        Things like the value of diversified supply chains, local production, control of borders are lessons learned that won’t be forgotten overnight. Many companies are shifting production out of China to India, Vietnam, Africa… That will boost their economies. And closer to home, a lot of companies are bringing manufacting closer to home to Mexico, Canada, and especially tbe US where automation, cheap energy, low transport costs and stronger IP protection outweigh cheap manual labor.

        Globalization is going to be rebalanced.

        And then there is the return to balance of power military focus.
        But that’s a separate but related matter, also underway before the pandemic but with increased urgency due to China’s heavy-handed “Wolf Diplomacy” and economic war against Australia. That is bringing back incrrased military spending and the end of the illusion of a “peace dividend”. Lower military spending didn’t bring peace or prosperity.

        Lots more changes, both economic and cultural are coming. Just not anything expected by 2019-thinking. Less visible trends are also getting amplified. Not everything is going to be unicorns and fluffy bunnies.

        The post Black Plague era is not a bad precedent.

        • Huh! I might be able to finally post the comment that was eaten last night.

          I am curious to see what will happen in the days to come. Good point about the decoupling from China, and I’ve seen that 4k TV boom. Although the mask policy made me think I was watching a crime in progress when I saw masked people carrying the TVs out of Best Buy.

          Working from home might become more prevalent, and maybe somehow legislatures might make themselves useful by clearing up any tax / insurance problems from working remotely across state lines. That would be great, especially for a few industries I can think of in high-cost-of-living states. But there seems to be a mass exodus from those states anyway.

          I would also love to see home schooling / pods / cooperatives of some sort becoming more prevalent. My brother and his wife decided to take the kids to Disney World this past fall. Normally they wouldn’t do something like that during the school year (duh). But the kids’ school decided to do some renovations now. Not during the summer, when the school is necessarily empty. Not in the spring, when the lockdowns began in March, and the schools were emptied. But renovate now, when kids are finally allowed to go into the buildings again on some of the days. I checked, but there was no millage on the November ballot for that school district. Too bad, I would have loved to see it go down in flames 🙂

          But parents are wondering, if the kids merely have to log in and watch the lesson or turn in the assignments, what is the point of physically sending them to school? I’m not going to be surprised if homeschooling starts becoming more popular.

          Another boon: Colleges might cost less if you have to do them from home instead of in a dorm and classroom. Many young people might be spared the burden of crippling loans. I’m still envious of that scene in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story when Nancy Kwan’s character gives Lee about $600 to go to college, and that’s all he needed. In my time, $600 wasn’t enough for the textbooks!

          But work-from-home, school-from-home are the lucky cases. Some small businesses might simply turn to Etsy or similar. But you can’t Etsy getting your hair or nails done, and it’s those kind of shops I’m concerned about closing forever. There will be a cost. Even worse if lockdown-happy governors also allowed stores to be burned down at will, because good luck getting insurance if you want to set up shop in those areas again.

          The Summer of Burning was the stupidest thing. In Detroit, the riots of the 60s are still a scar on the psyche and the landscape. You can still point to buildings destroyed in those riots. People still talk about families leaving the city after the riots; my mother’s family was one of the ones who did. For generations Detroit’s financial plight is still partly blamed on the tax base fleeing the city after the riots. I’m skeptical it will be different for Minneapolis and Portland, which purposely allowed the burnings and lootings.

          and still idiots refuse to believe this virus is real

          It’s not reasonable for KKR (or anyone) to call the people idiots at this point. Not after the Summer of Burning. Even if people started out taking all of those Covid guidelines seriously, the Summer of Burning showed that the people in charge weren’t taking covid seriously. You can’t say that people can’t gather to go to church, but then say it’s okay to gather to burn and loot and riot. Politicians won’t allow people to visit their dying loved ones in the hospital, but they’ll provide bail money for super spreaders, aka rioters and looters?

          I knew someone who was exactly the kind of person who would have died with her family surrounding her–they all gathered for her 90th birthday a few months prior. But thanks to the lockdowns, she was forced to die alone in the hospital. She wasn’t even allowed to have a decent funeral, because of covid restrictions. Politicians can’t say the riot gatherings are okay because they somehow won’t spread the virus, but nice old people must die alone lest they spread the virus, yet call people “crazy” or “stupid” for concluding the guidelines are nonsense.

          Going forward, it would be nice if people in charge of public policy started with the premise that they shouldn’t insult everyone’s intelligence.

          • Good points all over, especially about home schooling.
            (Now watch the teachers unions that have been lobbying for ever more regulation of home schooling go all the way and get home schooling banned.)

            About:

            “Even if people started out taking all of those Covid guidelines seriously, the Summer of Burning showed that the people in charge weren’t taking covid seriously. ”

            Not just that, but at the same time religious events were blocked, political events of the “proper” bent were exempt and the ones that weren’t were demonized. And the same day a certain governor ratcheted up the lockdown he was seen celebrating in public. Even the “face of medicine” got caught ignoring her own guidelines.

            Small wonder folks weary of the restrictions have concluded that “some animals are more equal” and that it is ulterior motives driving the restrictions, not the virus.

            Alas, your hope for a better breed of politician isn’t bearing out.
            The same people talking of “unity” on one hand are drawing up revenge lists on the other. We’ve gone beyond “talking past each other” to demonizing each other. And we all know how that kind of tribal warfare ends up.

            • The demonizing is strongly pointing to a dystopian future, and those are the books I usually don’t read.

              In my backburner sci-fi project I imagine colonists leaving earth after scouts confirm some of the Kepler worlds are viable. David Weber now seems charmingly naive to imagine the Manticorans’ money will be kept untouched in Swiss bank accounts. Not a slight on him; I’m just less optimistic.

              With stories about California wanting an exit tax for people leaving, it looks more likely that factions would target your Musks and Bezoses for trying to build ships and leaving in them. And in economic downturns, they’d raid the bank accounts of anyone on sleeper ships, as the Manticorans were. A kakistocracy strangling every innovation and scrap of freedom seems the safer bet. I would love to be proved wrong, though.

              • I assume you’ve heard about the plans for a weath tax, right? The levelers’ fondest dream. And NY already has an exit tax.
                https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/tax-collectors-chase-rich-new-yorkers-moving-to-low-tax-states.html

                One thing the levelers seem to forget that napalm is easy to make in a garage lab and drones are both cheap and unregulated. A future summer of burnings might not end the way they think. (There’s a reason the most effective terrorists have all been engineers. Most are still free.)

                I’m no fan of dystopias either but cautionary tales I do read. Especially the SF breed. They tend to remind us tbat existing tech has a hidden and very nasty side. The follow up to demonization can get very ugly very fast.

                As for Musk and Bezos space ambitions, I’m actually a bit surprised the chinese or russians haven’t had Musk assassinated yet. Not so much over STARSHIP as for STARLINK. A satellite-based internet of 40,000 satellites the US military can use. (And has already tested and found suitable.) With replacements already in orbit. That’s about as ASAT-proof as we can get with today’s tech. (They can also double as less accurate but functional GPS.)

                A bit further down the line, the Pentagon has been exploring buying a handful of STARSHIP systems for rapid response launches. Not discussed but easily doable is arming a couple of them with ASAT Lasers.

                The ’20’s are looking awfully “interesting”.

                Hopefully it won’t get that far but at this point the odds are non-zero.

      • England was certainly suffering from population pressures in the early 1300s – probably exacerbated by a deterioration in the climate – and the economic results of the black death certainly were a boon for the lower classes. However, I doubt that this example carries over to our current problems, for a start far too few people are dying to relieve resource restraints. However, Felix makes some valid points about the acceleration of business and other changes (though there is also a huge amount of economic destruction – see for example the aviation industry – and a big build up in government debt, probably especially in Europe).

        Note that I do not want to see more people dying of disease, though I understand that some radical environmentalists are looking forward to the “great dying”.

        • The economic boom to come isn’t from people dying (fortunately) but of business models dying. Disintermediation all over.

          B&M Retail was already under pressure, theater chains were near Chapter 11, Microsoft created Teams before the pandemic, subscription economics were already on the rise, and apropos of our common interest, ebooks and Indies were already taking share away from tradpub and bookstores were under stress.

          Where the pandemic and the year of chaos have wrought is change people’s perceptions, priorities, and behavior. Something to keep in mind for world building, methinks.

          • So let me tell you a short story from the company I work for (which will remain anonymous.)

            We switched to open office a number of years ago. Desks right next to each other.

            We were already using inside chat – jabber, then slack.

            What happened was that since we were all so close together, normal conversations between team members were considered to be disruptive by other people in the area – so interactions moved to slack. You might want to talk to the person next to you, but to keep from disturbing anyone you would slack them instead. It was the ‘correct’ thing to do.

            So what became the norm after awhile was that I would go to the office and spend the day there but hardly ever talk to the people around me. We already had a strong work-from-home culture, and WFH days were really not that much different from in-the-office days, you would just use a video calling app to call into any meetings you had, and that was normative as well. Most people took their hardware (laptops) home every day in case something came up to keep them home.

            So in March, when we were told to stay home, it wasn’t all that great a culture shock, not as great as it has been for some other companies. I carved out an area for a desk and bought a better office chair and mat, and I’ve been doing pretty much Ok.

            Now the word is not to return to the office until next summer, or even fall.

            And I ask myself, with my 40 foot commute, why would I even bother?

            ETA – A tank of gas used to last me about 2 weeks. Now it lasts me 2 months. Multiply that by millions of people and NOW you are talking disruptive.

            • Now imagine you had a three hour commute or paid $3000 a month for a walk-in closet of an apartment. How much incentive might you have to demand a return to a centralized workplace?

              As the CNET piece pointed out, companies are finding other uses (labs, test facilities, even manufacturing) for employee warehouses.

              They are also revisiting the very concept of the assembly line.
              I recently found out of a commercial electric vehicle startup moving to modular, heavily automated “microfactories” which allows them to scatter manufacturing capacity and still be competitive with tbe economies of scale of giant centralized factories.

              https://zenoot.com/articles/case-study-arrival-its-microfactories-and-reimagining-the-production-process/

              So it’s not just office space and fulfillment warehouses that are getting scattered.

              The 21st century is starting to show its personality and leaving 20th Century thinking behind. A lot of folks are going to be blindsided.

            • This quote got me looking in that direction:

              “There are more than 560 cities in the world, which have a population of over 1 million people, and each of these cities could have a microfactory producing 10,000 vehicles specifically tailored for the needs of that market,” Sverdlov said. “This model can be as scalable as McDonald’s or Starbucks.”

              https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/electric-van-startup-arrival-aims-reshape-vehicle-production

              Over at CHEDDAR, they said this:

              “In terms of COVID, it does mean we are working from home, but in terms of the engineering and the production we’ve managed to make sure each of the microfactories are safe,” said the Arrival President. “But again, with a smaller footprint, we actually have a smaller amount of employees per each microfactory, so it’s allowed us to be safe. And, so far, luckily, we are able to continue with our production plans as is.”

              This is what the bleeding edge looks like in 2020.
              I think I might enjoy the mid 21st century.

              (BTW, there’s a couple interesting videos on their microfactories on youtube.)

              • This is fortuitous, because I was wondering about microfactories for a sci-fi setting. We already have 3-D printing for smaller items, and it’s only a matter of time before businesses spring up around that possibility. No one will have to live in a particular city just to work in a given industry in the future.

                Someone could easily revive the “Sears catalog house,” now or in the future. For a backburner project I imagined an architect using 3-D houses to entice colonists to a new world. She was going to use building materials specific to the planet but rare on Earth, e.g., green quartz countertops or blue obsidian floors, etc.

                But I was pondering if microfactories were feasible for something like cars. Since the article in your link mentions Hyundai and GM are taking the idea seriously, this will be the next thing to look out for. Carvana is already doing the “car vending machine,” so why not have microfactories to custom-build your car, and drop it off in your driveway?

                • I just found out about them. They’ve running in stralth mode and only came out around Oct after the UPS order/investment.

                  The model sounds quite feasible and using warehouses (empty malls?) makes it cheap to build the factories. The company has yet to ship product but it is currently value at $15B. Makrs them an outfit to watch.

                  What caught my eye was the local customization and production aspect; the potential for addressing the low end markets in third world countries without tapping into hard currency for imports is very high. Products in the range of the Tata NANO but electric. It won’t be soon because of its heavy automation but the model should be adaptable to the tiny city cars of the African and Asian megacities.

                  As for interstellar colonies, I expect advanced building tech will be pretty much mandatory in (voluntary) colonies since I doubt there will be many exploitable workers for non-tech jobs. I forsee big labor shortages despite automation all over unless transport is dirt cheap and/or things are really bad on earth.

                  That’s one area Heinlein really missed the boat on; you’d need pretty pecular circumstances for covered wagon space colonies.

        • As for those hoping for a “Great Culling” they’re barking up the wrong tree; if we see mass casualties in the west this decade, they’ll come from bullets or missiles, maybe a few fertilizer bombs, not viruses.

  4. I am curious to see what will happen in the days to come.

    I can imagine working from home becoming more prevalent, and maybe somehow legislatures might make themselves useful by clearing up any tax / insurance problems from working remotely across state lines. That would be great.

    I would also love to see home schooling / pods / cooperatives of some sort becoming more prevalent. My brother and his wife decided to take the kids to Disney World this past fall. Normally they wouldn’t do something like that during the school year (duh). But the kids’ school decided to do some renovations now. Not during the summer, when the school is necessarily empty. Not in the spring, when the lockdowns began in March, and the schools were emptied. But renovate now, when kids are allowed to go into the buildings again on some of the days. I checked, but there was no millage on the November ballot for that school district. Too bad, I would have loved to see it go down in flames 🙂

    But parents are wondering, if the kids merely have to log in and watch the lesson or turn in the assignments, what is the point of physically sending them to school? I’m not going to be surprised if homeschooling starts becoming more popular.

    Another boon: Colleges might cost less if you have to do them from home instead of in a dorm and classroom. Many young people might be spared the burden of crippling loans. I’m still envious of that scene in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story when Nancy Kwan’s character gives Lee about $600 to go to college, and that’s all he needed. In my time, $600 wasn’t enough for the textbooks!

    But work-from-home, school-from-home are the lucky cases. Some small businesses might simply turn to Etsy or similar. But you can’t Etsy getting your hair or nails done, and it’s those kind of shops I’m concerned about closing forever. There will be a cost. Even worse if lockdown-happy governors also allowed stores to be burned down at will, because good luck getting insurance if you want to set up shop in those areas again.

    The Summer of Burning was the stupidest thing. In Detroit, the riots of the 60s are still a scar on the psyche and the landscape. You can still point to buildings destroyed in those riots. People still talk about families leaving the city after the riots; my mother’s family was one of the ones who did. For generations Detroit’s financial plight is still partly blamed on the tax base fleeing the city after the riots. I’m skeptical it will be different for Minneapolis and Portland, which purposely allowed the burnings and lootings.

    and still idiots refuse to believe this virus is real

    Nope, don’t get to call them idiots. Not if you were paying attention to the Summer of Burning. Even if people started out taking all of those Covid guidelines seriously, the Summer of Burning showed that the people in charge weren’t taking covid seriously. You can’t say that people can’t gather to go to church, but then say it’s okay to gather to burn and loot and riot. Politicians won’t allow people to visit their dying loved ones in the hospital, but they’ll provide bail money for super spreaders, aka rioters and looters?

    I knew someone who was exactly the kind of person who would have died with her family surrounding her–they all gathered for her 90th birthday a few months prior. But thanks to the lockdowns, she was forced to die alone in the hospital. She wasn’t even allowed to have a decent funeral, because of covid restrictions. Politicians can’t say the riot gatherings are okay because they somehow won’t spread the virus, but nice old people must die alone lest they spread the virus, yet call people “crazy” or “stupid” for concluding the guidelines are nonsense. Maybe public policies shouldn’t be designed to insult everyone’s intelligence.

  5. I’ve been comparing covid-19 to WWII in which U.S. military and civilian casualties were around 420,000. If the current death rate continues, the total U.S. deaths will top that by the end of January. Sooner the way the virus seems to be building momentum. It’s optimistic to expect effects of the vaccines to kick in before spring.

    My guess is that the covid-19 U.S. death toll will be on the scale of WWII, perhaps larger but in the same ballpark.

    But I see some big differences. The U.S. was in a far better position than post war Europe because our industrial infrastructure was intact.

    Post covid-19 U.S. infrastructure will have been neglected, but not bombed out. We’ll have lost a lot of people, but folks in their prime are less hard hit than retired people who certainly have their value, but economies are not rebuilt by senior citizens.

    If anything, our supply chains have been strengthened and a lot of economic dead wood is being culled. The digital network has proven itself and manufacturing is on the verge of being revitalized and localized with automated design, robots, and new techniques like 3-D printing. There are hints that halting climate change is becoming a for-profit venture with increases in renewable energy efficiency and improved battery technology. At least one oil company (BP) seems to be saying they never expect oil consumption to return to 2019 levels. Food production may jump with new crops and cultivation techniques such as vertical farming.

    All this suggests that we are on the verge of a radical economic transformation like post WWII without having to bulldoze as much rubble.

    But no one should expect to return to pre-2020 life. It won’t be the same. I grew up on old folks comparing pre and post war and I expect my grandchildren to grow up comparing pre and post covid-19.

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