To give some idea of scale – 3 billion people are currently under some sort of lockdown, from a full “Stay Home” to varying degrees of lockdown. Predictions and half-ass rumors are all over the place, with the negativity understandable but also probably wrong.
The bottom line here is that this epidemic is a purely physical process. It’s bordering on irrational to assume it will just go away. Epidemiology and immunology are the keys to fixing the problem. Good management is the only option to contain the disease and prevent deaths. Anything else is just blather.
It’s uninformed blather, too. Information about basics is still lacking. This is a new disease. Its effects range from lethal to barely noticeable. A lot of people don’t seem to be even getting it, but it’s very dangerous to large numbers of other people. Nobody knows if this virus is a seasonal thing, a one-off, or just a passing outbreak like its predecessor, SARS.
Likely scenarios
The probable scenarios are;
1. Epidemics don’t last forever. It will peak and numbers of infections will then drop. it may disappear entirely.
2. It might be seasonal. There’s no data, but if it is, it will create a predictable way of managing it to whatever extent possible.
3. The global effect is yet to be seen, but if the current infection trends are any sort of reliable guide, this thing doesn’t reinfect. That’s very good news.
The economics
The global economy will have to kickstart, whatever happens with the virus. This downturn has done a lot of damage.
The inevitable economic ramifications are potentially good:
• Recovery from the economic effects could be very rapid as businesses restart and people go back to work.
• Nobody’s going to be dragging the chain about restarting, particularly the financial sector.
• Capital losses are an issue for hundreds of millions of people. Might be an idea to let the superannuation/ 401k funds have a break to help rebuild.
• Money needs to circulate to reboot the basic global economy. A couple of years of stimulus may be required.
Learning from this experience
If the pandemic has done one useful thing, it’s shown that there are other ways of living and working.
• Homeschooling is far cheaper on education systems. All you need is an accredited curriculum.
• Online learning allows teachers to teach, not be social workers and police.
• Remote working drastically reduces business costs. This is an outstanding no-brainer and could help many businesses reduce their overheads in offices, etc.
• The “meeting culture” disease is one of the casualties of the pandemic. Decades of talk and billions of hours of productive time have been diverted from these mindless rituals. That’s no loss to anyone.
With whatever respect is due to those whose ideologies insist on living in the 1950s or the 19th century, meaning none at all –
• There is no reason for the 21st century to lug around the corpses of discredited, overpriced social management systems. You don’t even need buildings for some basic processes, let alone- top-heavy, dysfunctional, politically compromised management.
• People now have time to work with to gain skills and explore opportunities. That’s a vast improvement on the 24/7 nonsense of living like a cockroach for basic necessities.
• The “social order” of the past no longer exists, and hasn’t for decades. This inelegant alleged society must adapt to the new realities simply to survive. Survival means being able to survive, with minimal liabilities and costs.
• Politics has been shown to be the major liability to basic common sense in managing the pandemic. The reactions were too slow, and too heavily weighted to irrelevancies. The global health sector should be taken out of the hands of politicians and their corporate symbiotes. Who needs skanks running critical services, anyway?
As the saying goes, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. No, thanks.
