In the absence of pub philosophy in these social distancing times, thought I would ask here, admittedly a bunch of strangers on the Internet, but not a random selection of the great unwashed, but hopefully a more intelligent and socially aware group that most fac and sc holders seem to be.
I am not scare mongering, I am genuinely interested in what people think happens in six or twelve months time.
Covid-19 will just become another background omnipresent bug, everyone will have been exposed to some extent and will have developed antibodies, so it will do the rounds like flu and some will get sick for a few days, some will not notice it and some will get quite poorly. Vaccines will exist and will probably be offered to everyone who is vulnerable and it will become a combined "Flu and Covid shot". In the west it just becomes background, in underdeveloped countries it becomes another malaria - something that kills many people but is ignored by everyone because it is just poor people who die.
But does everything in the developed world go back to normal? Trillions of pounds/dollars will have been spent and public borrowing will be at an unimaginable level. The tiny minority who are the mega rich will own this debt and will hold even more power than they do today. Politicians will be more deeply in the pockets of those few.
The standard conservative policy may be "cuts and austerity and we can save our way out this mess" further distancing the gap between haves and have not. Or will there be a return to the opposite thinking of "borrow more and spend more to stimulate the economy?" Either way, there will be massive social unrest.
And that is just the UK. What about the rest of the world? Will Americans just say "Shucks... diseases have evolved for as long as there has been life so let's just get on with things" or will there be a more modern response of "Someone is to blame for this disaster and we will find and make them accountable".
If there is a blame game, how many global leaders will be strong enough to say, "Sorry, the buck stops with me, and we were not prepared enough to cope with a pandemic which has been predicted for many years. We did not have the infrastructure and ability to contain. It has happened, and it is how we act from here forward that is important."
Or will, as I fear we are already seeing from Trump, diversion of blame, framing this as some sort of Chinese to be blamed and they must pay sort of thing. The bug came from China (man made in a lab, or evolved through normal evolution randomness), it was not contained there largely due to lack of immediate recognition and response. Or possibly a real world test that went wrong.
But where else in the world would that initial response have been better? In the UK our response to disease in cattle over the last few decades has resulted in mass culls to isolate healthy animals to stop the spread. You can't do that with humans (in this country at least). With Covid-19 the public largely seem to think we can ignore it until it is really bad, then we can stop it spreading. But that is not how isolation works. Isolating after you have spread it is pointless. We quickly saw the Chinese forcing isolation, spraying streets with hydrogen peroxide to do what they could to stop it spreading. Watching that on the TV back in January, I knew that there was no way the west could act as decisively, or take such an economic hit to paralyse whole cities. It may have been too late, but if you look at the US now, they are going to be facing a major disaster in about a month. They have the perfect storm of 'Independent' people, aging population and significant obesity related problems combined with a health care system that does not lend itself to mass infections. Italy has now locked down parts of Lombardy, you can only be outside for very specific reasons, but it is too late, it is too wide spread in those regions to stop it infecting more there. Perimeter restrictions may stop it spreading if it is contained within that perimeter, but clearly that is also too late.
So do American politicians push the world towards international conflict in a blame game to focus public anger and rebellion away from themselves and onto the Chinese? I heard US citizens are buying guns like Londoners have been buying up pasta. They clearly feel the need to protect themselves from an increase in violence and robbery that will come in times of hardship. In six months or so, there will be tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousand dead Americans, mass unemployment, and an enormous anger that needs to be calmed, or released.
What can we do now to calm that anger, to stop it growing until it boils over? Starting a blame game with the Chinese is not the direction we should be going in. International cooperation and friendship is now more important than ever.
I am not scare mongering, I am genuinely interested in what people think happens in six or twelve months time.
Covid-19 will just become another background omnipresent bug, everyone will have been exposed to some extent and will have developed antibodies, so it will do the rounds like flu and some will get sick for a few days, some will not notice it and some will get quite poorly. Vaccines will exist and will probably be offered to everyone who is vulnerable and it will become a combined "Flu and Covid shot". In the west it just becomes background, in underdeveloped countries it becomes another malaria - something that kills many people but is ignored by everyone because it is just poor people who die.
But does everything in the developed world go back to normal? Trillions of pounds/dollars will have been spent and public borrowing will be at an unimaginable level. The tiny minority who are the mega rich will own this debt and will hold even more power than they do today. Politicians will be more deeply in the pockets of those few.
The standard conservative policy may be "cuts and austerity and we can save our way out this mess" further distancing the gap between haves and have not. Or will there be a return to the opposite thinking of "borrow more and spend more to stimulate the economy?" Either way, there will be massive social unrest.
And that is just the UK. What about the rest of the world? Will Americans just say "Shucks... diseases have evolved for as long as there has been life so let's just get on with things" or will there be a more modern response of "Someone is to blame for this disaster and we will find and make them accountable".
If there is a blame game, how many global leaders will be strong enough to say, "Sorry, the buck stops with me, and we were not prepared enough to cope with a pandemic which has been predicted for many years. We did not have the infrastructure and ability to contain. It has happened, and it is how we act from here forward that is important."
Or will, as I fear we are already seeing from Trump, diversion of blame, framing this as some sort of Chinese to be blamed and they must pay sort of thing. The bug came from China (man made in a lab, or evolved through normal evolution randomness), it was not contained there largely due to lack of immediate recognition and response. Or possibly a real world test that went wrong.
But where else in the world would that initial response have been better? In the UK our response to disease in cattle over the last few decades has resulted in mass culls to isolate healthy animals to stop the spread. You can't do that with humans (in this country at least). With Covid-19 the public largely seem to think we can ignore it until it is really bad, then we can stop it spreading. But that is not how isolation works. Isolating after you have spread it is pointless. We quickly saw the Chinese forcing isolation, spraying streets with hydrogen peroxide to do what they could to stop it spreading. Watching that on the TV back in January, I knew that there was no way the west could act as decisively, or take such an economic hit to paralyse whole cities. It may have been too late, but if you look at the US now, they are going to be facing a major disaster in about a month. They have the perfect storm of 'Independent' people, aging population and significant obesity related problems combined with a health care system that does not lend itself to mass infections. Italy has now locked down parts of Lombardy, you can only be outside for very specific reasons, but it is too late, it is too wide spread in those regions to stop it infecting more there. Perimeter restrictions may stop it spreading if it is contained within that perimeter, but clearly that is also too late.
So do American politicians push the world towards international conflict in a blame game to focus public anger and rebellion away from themselves and onto the Chinese? I heard US citizens are buying guns like Londoners have been buying up pasta. They clearly feel the need to protect themselves from an increase in violence and robbery that will come in times of hardship. In six months or so, there will be tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousand dead Americans, mass unemployment, and an enormous anger that needs to be calmed, or released.
What can we do now to calm that anger, to stop it growing until it boils over? Starting a blame game with the Chinese is not the direction we should be going in. International cooperation and friendship is now more important than ever.
