Let’s say, as seems increasingly likely, that the coronavirus outbreak become a pandemic. What will the affect to our civilization likely be? Some numbers being tossed about by epidemiologists are that around 40-70% of humans worldwide would be affected. Mortality seems likely to be in the 0.5 to 2 percent range. Let’s pick a number somewhere in the middle of those ranges, and say that means that around 50 million people worldwide will end up dying from the disease.
So what does the world look like on 2/25/2021? Will this be long forgotten by then, or will the outbreak have changed society in major ways? I’d like to hear from others before posting my own speculation.
This is a hypothetical as of now, but it seems more likely than not that we’re headed towards a pandemic.
ISTM it is wildly unlikely that the disease could reach such levels, but if it did, we’d have the severe lockdown that is happening in China, happening in all other 197 nations as well. The global economy would take a massive downturn. There would either be strong anti-immigrant sentiment (keep foreigners out!) or, paradoxically, perhaps no anti-immigrant sentiment if the whole world is equally sick - (foreigners would be no more sick than one’s own people.) Societies with universal healthcare would have to deny it to foreigners if there are many foreigners crowding and coming in to seek cheap healthcare.
We could reach that point. I’ve also been thinking, however, that we could reach a point where it’s so widespread that we collectively give up on the ideas of quarantines in order to avoid that massive economic downturn. Admittedly that’s just me speculating, and I could be completely wrong about a “the virus is out in the wild so we might as well give up on trying to stop it” type thinking becoming the predominant reaction.
I don’t think the world could ever adopt a “we’ll just let the virus rip” approach because this virus does not give you immunity - you can get infected again. In other words, the epidemic could hypothetically go on forever, re-infecting patients who had already recovered.
If it were a matter of “let the virus do its thing and only the old or weak will die, and those who recover will gain immunity” that would be one thing, but this virus is not like that.
In Canada, our universal healthcare does not cover foreign visitors. Never has, so no change in policy needed. If you are visiting Canada, better make sure you have good travel insurance, because a hospital stay could end up being VERY expensive for you.
About 50-60 million people die each year from all “normal” causes combined, so a 50 million death toll from covid would effectively double the death rate for the year.
No, it would not end civilization. It could, however, wind up being extremely disruptive both physically and economically.
Over 27,000 people have recovered from the virus. If there was a problem with re-infection you would find that hundreds of people have been reinfected–not just one–because the vast majority are living in areas where infection is widespread.
OP: I find it odd that you refer to changes happening by one year from now as society doesn’t change that fast. By one year I would expect a massive recession, vastly overcrowded hospitals.
Right now we have the technology and small market shares for online shopping, online education, working from home. These could change to become vastly more common over the next few years.
I went with a year because by then we’ll have likely reached an equilibrium regarding the virus itself. It could be a pandemic that has burned itself out. It could be that we end up with something like influenza which works it’s way around the world on a yearly basis or some other kind of cycle. Maybe, if we’re lucky, it could be that we end up having contained it and that there are no more people that are infected. In terms of the disease itself one year out is likely to be at an equilibrium. In terms of societal disruption, I agree that it could be we won’t be at a new equilibrium, so feel free to go out further than that.
It’s also possible that someone who recovered from the original covid-19 could be re-infected by a mutation of it that changed just enough to evade the person’s immunity from the first infection. Viruses do, after all, mutate. But I would not expect it to be a common occurrence.
Even if this isn’t just a testing error (he never fully recovered), “One guy recovered then contracted the disease again” does not indicate that others don’t get immunity. Biological responses are statistical, not absolute. There are always some people who won’t become immune, and even if recovering from the disease makes 99+% of people immune, you’re going to be able to find plenty of cases like this given a large enough infected population.
The first experimental vaccine is in testing. Obviously that’s no guarantee of anything, but if the pandemic gets bad enough, if and when we do find a vaccine that works, FDA approval could be expedited beyond the year or 18 months currently estimated.
So I don’t expect the impact to be trivial, nor do I expect it to be anything we remember ten years from now.
One big, big change I expect to see from this is a push for more 3D printing, both on large, industrial/commercial items and on smaller, personal consumer items.
The supply chain is easier to maintain if it’s mostly shipping a few types of raw materials around instead of finished products or components.
There’s little chance it’s going to be contained. Most likely it’ll become endemic, like colds and the flu. The main question is how much longer are we going to be panicking over it.
It depends on how loosely one defines “affect”. The economic fallout is already significant, and may be getting much worse.
This is an election year, and the administration’s response to this virus will become an issue possibly affecting the outcome. The
Olympics may be cancelled or postponed.
And from the dark side of my brain, it is possible that the coronavirus was an attempt at some sort of
biological weapon that got out of control, which could lead to chaos…