I do agree that this is a life changing event, but I'm saddened to see people returning to bars as crowded as they were before the pandemic hit because a Governor or a court said they could. I've also seen history repeat itself because we simply don't learn that much from the past.
Look at tornado's and hurricane's, there are ways of building structures to withstand them, and they don't cost that much more than stick construction, but we don't change the building codes to insist on it, and in fact we make it hard to change building codes. The same can be said for fire and earthquake resistance, but stick frame builders won't go away.
We may be better prepared for the next pandemic, but if it's over a hundred years from now, like the last really bad one, it's doubtful, though our technology should be much improved. We could have been far better prepared, but books on pandemics and experts were ignored, now we're catching up, so I really don't know that it can't happen again. We'll be living differently, many companies may find that many people can work from home, and save the company lots of money in doing so. Education will probably be changed as well with more courses taught on line. Some colleges are going to zoom classes completely in the Fall, if the quality of education can be maintained, or improved on, it should substantially lower the cost.
Certain things do require hands on training, but they're the more practical courses like shop classes, music, art, etc. I can remember when slide rule accuracy was fine, now people calculate things down to unlimited decimal places, even when the assumptions the calcs are based on are accurate to only two or three places, just like the slide rule.
We're now at the point where work will be needed for many people who's companies won't exist after the pandemic. If they wanted to do things wisely they'd spend trillions on the infrastructure they always talk about, but rarely do more than band-aid fixes on. When a 100 year old pipe fails do they replace it all, absolutely not, they replace just the failed portion knowing that other parts will fail some time in the not to distant future, but we don't have the money to do it right.
We used to have an expression, we never have the time to do it right, we always have the time to do it over. That's how we work on our infrastructure. Here in California perfectly good homes are frequently torn down that are no more than 50 or so years old. In much of Europe, many of the buildings have existed for centuries and have been adapted to bring in things like electricity, running water, sewers, etc.
I do hope we learn, but I expect some States who had the curve leveling off or starting down will be back on an upward trajectory in a few weeks, it's sad but they all listen to the President rather than the scientists.
Gary
