The Longterm Social Effects of this Crisis

The greatest long term effect of the Spanish Flu pandemic in the early 20th century was its effect on World War I. It hit Germany and Austria before it hit France and England giving the Allies early advantages and the Allies eventually won the war. This flu is often considered the "forgotten" pandemic because there was so much else going on in the world at the time, not just a World War but other major illnesses also hit the world around the same time: yellow fever, diphtheria, cholera and typhoid.  History classes often overlook the diseases of this era because of the war. The Spanish Flu lasted 36 months and killed 50 million people. We all hope this pandemic won't be as devastating. At the writing of this sentence, the world is at three million and counting.

The long term effects I am talking about in this post are the social ones. The Spanish Flu left people with a lingering lack of trust in strangers. Strangers carry disease. This lead to isolationism and xenophobia giving way to fascists like Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Of course, there were other factors, like a horrendous war, but the flu contributed to it. Anti-Semites have long linked Jews to the plague. Hitler famously referred to them as "racial tuberculosis" in "German lungs."  Such vile terms were more effective with the memory of the Spanish Flu fresh in their memory. .

It is impossible from this vantage point to predict the long term effects of COVID-19 on our society. Most lasting societal changes usually come as a surprise. Henry Ford had no idea that the mass production of cars would lead to more teenage pregnancies and air pollution. Did the flood of boys without fathers after World War II bring us rock and roll?  Did Roe v. Wade help bring us low crime rates decades later due to the lack of unwanted children? These are thought experiments. Let's do it, a COVID-19 version.

Celebrity: Celebrities have been showing us who they really are in this crisis. Maybe we'll finally stop making otherwise stupid, careless and mega-privileged people famous. Maybe we'll be more selective on who gets to be famous or perhaps put them on a lower pedestal. Of course not all celebrities are so bad. The smart ones know how to control themselves and shut up. You notice that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt haven't stuck their feet in their mouths, but the hyper-narcissists and morons surely are.

• Ellen DeGeneres (aka Queen of Nice) compared her quarantine to being in a prison while she lives in a beachfront palatial mansion 
• Evangeline Lily urged people to ignore social distancing rules and isolation using terms like "Marshall Law" on Instagram which she obviously doesn't understand nor know how to spell. 
• Actress Jaimie King released a video thanking the virus 
• Gwyneth Paltrow is tweeting about what the best dildo to use during isolation, selling them as well. Some poor warehouse worker is risking his/her life to get someone a dildo. 
• Sam Smith tweeted the stages of his meltdown while he had to deal with isolation in his $15 million London mansion
• NBA player Ruby Gobert touched a bunch of mics at a media event as a joke. A few days later, he tested positive.
• Gisele Bundchen posted a picture of herself in front of a tropical waterfall meditating.
• High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens suggested that people dying is "like, inevitable."
• Bette Middler is figuring out what her appliances do, no joke.

While many of their fans are living in tiny apartments, some of them under duress ... we get a crash course in how crudely unequal our society is. Our doctors, who keep us alive, don't live this way. Entertainers do. Will income inequality become an even bigger issue after this crisis?

Entertainment: When next year's television shows roll out, will they be including the pandemic in their story lines?  Do we want them to? Do you prefer them to have more of an escapist quality? Will we get to see the family on "This Is Us" in social isolation ... where will the plot line come from. We get to watch them binge watch other shows and argue ... not so fun.

Concert venues will be devastated by this crisis.Our days of hanging shoulder to shoulder in the dark listening to our favorite bands jam may be a thing of the past. They will be the last businesses to be allowed to open and for all we know, may not be allowed to fill them in like they used to.  This means that entry and/or beer will be more expensive ... I cried a little bit while writing this.

Environmental: Quarantine is only a few weeks old and already we see the environment recovering. Factories are idle, planes are grounded and commuters are staying home. We have cut carbon emissions worldwide by 8% and energy use is down in some places by 25% of last year. Some cities are reporting seeing constellations for the first time in decades. With the city streets desolate, wild life is returning to some areas that haven't seen them in decades. We will return to our old ways soon enough but this quick recovery might really inspire people to change. Stay home, use less, use mass transit, telecommute ... these are easy to do for some of us. We might just get into the habit.

Cities around the world have closed more than 1,000 miles of streets to cars for the use of bicycles. How much of that is going to be permanent? Seattle has already announced that 20 miles of their new bike only roads will be permanent. If the locals like it, it will stay. So if this is happening in your area. Contact a politician to keep it. They are probably desperate to find ways to make citizens happy right now.

Hate: Hate crimes are already a lot higher for anyone that looks Chinese. Trump hasn't helped with this. "Go back to China," "Kung Flu" and "Wu Flu" are all things being said to and about people from Far East origins. Hate will only subside until we get rid of the creep in the White House, but it will never go away permanently. The protests in Michigan and other states have been organized by white supremacy groups. Many of the people showing up don't even know this. I hope this is all temporary, but isolation breeds contempt and xenophobic (the evil twin of isolationism) is not far behind. I fear these people will get more powerful the longer this quarantine lasts. Here is a list from the Anti-Defamation League of anti-Asian incidents in America since this crisis began.

Sporting Events: Maybe we'll have standing ovations for doctors, scientists and other essential workers during our sporting events rather than for the military. Instead of players wearing khaki to honor the troops, maybe they will wear smocks to honor the real heroes, and not those who make invasions possible. We live in a violent nation, with a violent past. It would be nice, if our priorities could finally change.

Parades: Maybe our parades will celebrate these essential workers as well.

The Work Place: A lot of mangers are going to realize after this is over that remote employees are quite productive. I have been doing it for twelve years now and it has its distractions but compared to the distractions of being in the office, it is nothing. No one is coming into my office to talk about the game or the weather, and I have no commuter traffic to stress me out.  Telecommuting is the way to go. Those who can do it, will. Office spaces will become like empty warehouses, and food delivery, during work hours, will spike to new heights. This is not going away.

Teachers: The only real distractions, for a lot of us, these days is that kids are at home. Will there be more respect for our teachers now that many parents had to teach their own kids and they getting first hand knowledge how difficult their angels really are to teach? or how difficult teaching actually really is? I'm guessing that the snow day will no longer exist now that we know teaching can happen remotely. Teachers should have a national strike in the Fall, demanding more pay.  We'd all freak to think that we'd have to have our kids home anymore after this Spring and cave immediately. 

Essential Workers: Will people have more respect for essential workers? I am not talking about me, someone who supports a hospital's software system. But those who bring us food, stack shelves, drive trucks and buses. They are not staying home and they are keeping us alive. I am guessing once this is over, we will go back to paying them badly and not providing them health care. That's the America I know. Hopefully, I am wrong. But with scum like Trump and his loyalty cult in charge, I don't see how change for the essential worker could be possible. Can you imagine how bad it would be without Obamacare (aka the ACA)? And yet, Trump is still busy trying to repeal it. I'm guessing (and hoping) that Medicare For All will get a big boost from this crisis, but I have been very wrong about this type of thing in the past. I did predict a landslide victory for President Gore.

Trade: Isolation will raise its ugly head again. I am expecting that domestic manufacturing will make a comeback. We still have factories in the US now, but not like in the past. I expect factories, mostly with robotic workers, will increase. Buying American will give people a sense of security and consumers will pay more for that feeling ... but not a lot more.This come back will be short.lived. Businesses will find new and creative ways to trick people that something is made domestically and eventually, they will forget all about this.

The Economy - What industry will recover? Will people go to gyms anymore now that they know how easy it is to do the trainer thing on-line. I want to know how my favorite restaurants are going to survive this. Restaurants have such a thin profit margin. How could they possibly survive this? I have a friend who is a contractor who did two hours of work in April, doing a training on Zoom. The state of Vermont used that as a reason to reject him for a small business grant. You think quarantine has been crazy, the recovery is going to be completely nuts.

After the Spanish Flu, if you had the flu and survived, this gave you economic benefits over others who had not. At this point, we don't know if having COVID-19 makes you immune. If this does end up being true for COVID-19, I could imagine that anyone that works with the public would have the advantage in a pre-vaccine economy.

Privacy: Those in charge know that when we are in crisis, we are more likely to accept power grabs... think of the Patriot Act after 9/11. Some authoritarian countries are using this crisis as justification to monitor their citizens. I can imagine this will get worst before it gets better. Expect more invasion of your privacy. It will be justified under the moniker of public health.

New Cold War: Will this crisis spark a new Cold War with China. Should they pay for their negligence in the matter of the spreading of the virus and the lack of openness? As soon as healthcare workers started getting sick, they should have told the world about it. There was a three week period that we could have stopped this pandemic or at least saved many lives. Perhaps they should reimburse the world, but they won't so why push it? It also sets an awful precedence, especially with the recent discovery that the Spanish Flu started in Kansas. If we push this, they may just close their doors to the world. You think a world where is China is open is a bad thing, wait until they shut their borders!

Politics: Maybe we'll stop electing politicians who are ignorant of science. Germany elected a Chancellor that has a PHD in Chemistry who wrote her thesis on quantum chemistry ... the US elected a President who doesn't understand and rejects evolution. Guess which country has been better prepared for this crisis?  Perhaps the Republican Party's war on science will finally come to an end.

Trump missed a golden opportunity. Great presidents emerge in the midst of great crises. FDR with World War II and The Depression, Lincoln in the Civil War ... we remember them as great leaders for taking us forward. We barely remember Hoover and Buchanan ... because they faltered. This disease's second wave will be hitting us badly right around the time of the presidential election. Hopefully, people will remember Trump's disastrous performance and lack of leader while they go into the polls. 

The countries doing the best during this crisis are the countries with the strong safety nets: Germany, South Korea and Taiwan. The countries with libertarian bents, the US and the UK, are fairing badly. Will we learn from this lesson? COVID-19 is the first truly global event in human history. Perhaps it will make the world closer.  It is hard to be believe when yahoos with guns are storming statehouses.But maybe this crisis will just scare enough people to move us along on this matter. Government can be a good thing with the right people in charge.