Yes, war does. But do pandemics?
Note that in our laws of history, we have nothing claiming that pandemics change everything. And in pondering it, for good reason.
They don't.
But this one might change quite a bit.
First the comparison to war.
Gen. George S. Patton talking with Lt. Col. Lyle Bernard in Sicily. When I was in basic training at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, one of the barracks had painted on it another phrase of Patton's, that being "Prepare for war. . . all else is bullshit."
George Patton claimed that "Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink in insignificance", and sadly, history has shown that view to largely correct. That isn't to praise war, but its to note that war is the only thing that peoples and nations engage in that has, at least heretofore brought about a national and international level of dedication on the society wide level that it has exhibited. Only the Space Race, in the case of the US and USSR, compares, although it fairness it does compare.
The small memorial left to fallen astronauts and cosmonauts by Apollo 15's mission to the moon. We may have been the Soviet's rival to get to the moon, but notably, we remembered their individual sacrifices when we got their. Another lesson, perhaps, we should take to heart here.
Because the amount of dedication nations exhibit to fighting wars is so vast, it's also the case that wars have worked enormous societal changes. As with war itself, nothing else really compares to it. Even pandemics have not. . . usually.
There are exceptions.
The Great Plague provides a set of example. The plague raged across the globe, and indeed by some measure that pandemic is still in progress, but the real hard hitting impact of it was in Europe from 1347 to 1351. It killed about 30% of the European population in that time frame. Bizarrely, and ironically, for those who survived it, it actually had the impact of making the remainder of their lives, and that of their immediate descendants, better than they had been, which is not an endorsement of the plague in some sort of sick Malthusian way. Rather, most people were peasants and the plague caused a labor shortage, with the labor being filled by peasants, the laboring class.
The same is true, fwiw, with Russian serfs in regards to World War One. Stories of the 1914-1918 horror, when they deal with Russia, are full of tales of how bad the life of serfs was, but in fact their condition had been steadily improving since the 1890s and World War One notably improved it in part because the bulk of the Russian army was made up of serfs. With so many men drafted, there was a labor shortage that benefited those who remained at home, which actually was, in economic terms, most people as Russian peasants lived a largely communal community existence at the time.
The same is not true, however, of the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919. It just killed people. As the population of the globe was really busy killing each other anyhow, it just added more death to what was already a massively bloody few years. It didn't advance anyone's condition, and it didn't retard any either. It didn't bring about societal changes. It may have advanced medicine a bit, but then the Great War was doing that anyhow.
Now, most certainly, I'm sure you would be able to find scholarly articles maintaining the opposite. But none the less, I'll maintain that the Spanish Flu was a horror, but it really didn't change much in the world other than making the entire world's population miserable in a time of global misery. If we attribute anything to it, what we might note is that its impact on the German Army's Spring Offensive of 1918 is probable, but undocumented. The 1918-19 flu took the Australian Army out of the war in Europe in the fall of 1918, which shows to a degree how bad it was, but the German Army kept on fighting until the German Navy had enough.
Indeed, we might note, the Imperial War Museum keeps a list of women who died young in its collection of photographs from this period, and we can tell from that sad list that the 18-19 flu raged throughout female nurses and relief workers everywhere, killing them wherever they were. This includes not only France, but those assigned to far off missions in Russia as well. And if they were getting sick in their youth's and dying in Russia, that means that Allied soldiers in Russia also were, as were Russian soldiers and civilians as well We don't hear, however, anything about the Spanish Flu in Russia. It's horrors in the this period and for decades thereafter were too horrific otherwise and too horrifically man made.
So, anyhow, what about this event?
Well, it will change things. It came at a time, and its impacting in such a way, in part because there are no big wars going on, that it can't be ignored and it is being acted and over overacted upon. Seventy Years of peace and prosperity, for one thing, are something that people get used to and society isn't going to let a virus destroy that. And coming at the pinnacle of a technological revolution, it's going to push things over the edge in lots of ways.
Humans are, I'd note, bad prognosticators, but my record is better than most. Here's what I think will occur.
1. This is the last pandemic
President Trump was right when he said that these things had always happened. But he's wrong when he said they'll happen again. They won't.
Indeed, pandemics themselves have changed over the decades, centuries and millennia. That points towards this one being the last one.
All pandemics have to spread somehow to obtain that status. It's how they travel that makes them a pandemic.
Plague infected flea.
The Black Death, i.e, the bubonic plague, was and is carried by fleas. It's disgusting, but it's also pretty slow, all things being considered.
The bubonic plague (and I actually have an uncle who had it, caught in the docks in Montreal) is a bacteria, not a virus. It's pretty bad, but that's the first thing about its that's notable. Bacteria, not a virus.
You also have to be bit by a flea that's carrying it.
Given this, while people still get it, and it's still a horrible disease, we know how to manage it. And we know how to treat it. It's spread around the globe, to be sure, but as we don't live in huddled extraordinarily dirty conditions packed with mice and rats as a rule anymore, we don't have to worry all that much about the plague, although hunters and those who work in areas infested with mice and rats should be concerned about it. The last person in this region I'm aware of to get it, and he died from it, got it from a flea from a bobcat. I've read of hunters in states to the south of here getting it as well. I've also read of people just getting it by walking through areas infested with rabbits, which is a good reason that communities, like the one I live in, should be concerned about letting rabbits run all over everything.
Indeed, it's of note that the bubonic plague actually took from 541 to 1666 to really run its course, assuming it has now. It'd endemic, as already noted, in may places. We hear about the Black Death and think of it as the plague, but the plague really got rolling in 541 in what's called the Plague of Justinian, which tells us a lot about how it gets around. That plague lasted from 541 to 542 and hit Anatolia and the coastal regions of the Mediterranean. In short, places that fleas can pack a ride to on rats. The Black Death was the second phase of the global bubonic plague pandemic, and ended with the Great Plague of London.
Interestingly, by some accounts the bubonic plague really got rolling in China in 1331, but that discounts the Plague of Justinian. It really started in Europe around 1360 in its second phases, although those weren't the high death years.
The reason I note this pandemic here is that it did travel around the globe, but not at lightning speed. If it were a new contagon today, it wouldn't make it around the globe. As it was, it was a really long running menace, but it took it nearly 1,000 years to really break out in its most horrific expression.
That's one way in which the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu is a lot more like COVID 19. Indeed, all of the recent scary viruses have the 18/19 Flu as their model.
Influenza is of course a virus, and like a lot of viruses it has a strange cycle it goes through before it gets to human beings.
Influenza
The flu virus mutates constantly which is why its constantly around. It's cycle is bizarrely dependant to some degree on the weather and it always involves transmission and evolution through some animal hosts. Birds are the most common ones, but pigs play that role as well. By some accounts the 1918/19 flu had been through both birds and pigs before it got to us.
That's a pretty complicated life cycle, if we call it that, which perhaps we should not, as there's real debate on whether or not influenza is alive. It's bizarre. At any rate, when it gets to us, it's an airborne disease that we pick up from other people.
This makes it a less efficient contagion than the plague, which saddles up with fleas and hops around the world that way. But for more modern transportation, it'd rarely be the case that a flu outbreak would be just that, an outbreak.
Flu would still be deadly, but it'd be deadly mostly by region. By 1918, however, that was no longer the case as global transportation was pretty fast, even if we wouldn't recognize it that way now. Ships don't' take that long to cross oceans and once a person with the flu boards a train, he can take it pretty far pretty quickly, all while giving it to everyone in his train car.
World War One presented the ideal environment for something like that, for obvious reasons. By some accounts the disease had its origin at Camp Funston, Kansas. By others, it was in Kansas prior to the Ft. Riley outbreak. By yet still others it came in to the US with Chinese workers who were transported to the U.S. from China, across China by train, and then on to Europe (I really have my doubts about this theory). At any rate, once it was a mass outbreak at Camp Funston it was off and rolling, literally by troop train and troop transport ships. Indeed, ships played a major role in getting it everywhere.
Nothing like that has happened since, and for good reason. By World War Two we had a better and better handle on infectious disease and the Second World War advanced medicine, as wars will do. In the late 1970s AIDS first entered the scene as a new virus, widely believed to have gone through other simeans in Africa first and then on to humans, but the disease not airborne and therefore, in spite of widespread fears about it, it never posed the wider threat to all humans the way airborne viruses do.
Nonetheless, people have been struck by flus out of Asia continually and the memory of the 18/19 pandemic remains. SARS, another coronavirus, threatened to break out twice, once as SARS and then as SARS 2, both time seemingly having had bats as the animal host prior to humans. Given that, it was only a matter of time. With COVID 19 we ran out of time. And with aircraft now the quick means of global transport, a global pandemic was inevitable.
But at the same time, non viruses is as scary or lethal as they once were, COVID 19 notwithstanding. It's a bad disease, but we have anti virals, which we didn't in 18/19, and the knowledge on viruses is vastly superior to what it was even as recently as the early 1970s, thanks to the tragedy of AIDS. Indeed, at one time physicians believed that the AIDS virus, due to research on it, would result in the end of the "common cold", the Coronavirus.
AIDS didn't', but the Coronavirus will help do so. People won't want to ever repeat this and, moreover, the study taps and money taps are rolling along.
This will be it.
2. The declining value of office space.
One of the things about big changes that occur during war is that they were often trends prior them.
Not always, by any means, but quote often.
It'd be usual here to give the example of women in the workplace, which is commonly cited to have come about due to World War Two. We don't accept that thesis here, however, as long term readers know and, moreover, sa the statistics demonstrate. So we'll eschew that example other that to note that both World War One and World War Two saw women in manufacturing and industrial roles that they didn't occupy, only to have those roles return to normal after the war. If anything, we can argue that the examples of both wars acclimated people to women in the workplace, but it's a poor example.
Health insurance would be a better example.
Health insurance was a thing a century ago, but very few Americans as a rule had it, and if they did, it was unlikely to have been provided through their employer. Indeed, it was a lot more likely, if they received any kind of health benefit from their employer, and few did, that they worked for a company that had a company doctor. Many mining companies, for example, employed a company doctor.
This changed during World War Two when the government froze wages. The government's goal, sensibly enough, was to deter inflation in an overheated job market. But as benefits were not frozen, and health insurance could be purchased by manufacturers as a benefit for employees, employers began to do that in order to entice employees to move from one company to another. And hence, the era of government sponsored health insurance arrived. And it's been with us every since, although to a declining level in recent years.
This is, of course, an example of Fifth Law of History, as well as the law of unintended results. That is, this is one of the things the Second World War changed forever (and it changed health care, we might note, in the UK as well, but in a different manner), as well as being an unintended result of a law designed to achieve something else. The government wanted to freeze wages in wartime as a hedge against inflation, employers wanted to lure employees from other firms to theirs, and nobody had thought of health insurance much before that.
That may not be the best example, but it is an example, and there are many other such things we could point to. World War One and World War Two, for example, accelerated blag migration from the South to the North, as jobs opened up, changing the demographic landscape of the country forever. The Second World War, as we've explored before, brought 4x4 trucks to the showroom floor, and that in turn brought them out to the ranches, and that in turn meant that fewer year around cowboys were needed. You get the picture.
Indeed, the last example might be the best one for our purposes here. Prior to the Second World War ranches had already evolved into largely family run businesses, but most ranches of any size continued to employ a few cowhands year around. Usually one or two of those hands lived in remote camps, in the Rocky Mountain Region, all winter long, to maintain operations, as needed, and watch for stray cattle, in the high country.
It isn't as if there were no 4x4 vehicles before the war. Indeed, they were coming on during the 1930s in a recognizable, but very specialized, form. The war changed that, and that in turn changed how people, including ranchers, but certainly not just them, went to the backcountry. And for quite a few people, that changed how they were employed.
There's something like that going on now. For at least twenty years there's been a move toward telecommuting and in some industries its very advanced. In the insurance industry, for example it is, and normally commercial insurance adjusters work out of their homes and cover regions distant from where they live. It's gone seamlessly. The companies have headquarters, but most people who work for the company don't work in them.
While exactly how it will develop cannot be really accurately foreseen now, what does seem to me to be clear is that a lot of office managers are looking at companies that are largely keeping on keeping on right now in spite of most of their key employees working from home. Those managers are now wondering why they're leasing an expensive floor in a downtown office building in, let's say, Denver, when they could reduce that space by a tenth, keep their server there, and maybe have a few employees and a conference room instead.
It's already been noted in this crisis that companies save money when workers can (effectively) telecommute. If that proves to be the case, the longer this matter goes on, the larger the percentage of the workforce that will never come back downtown to the office will be. And as that occurs, the smaller the need for large office spaces will be.
And the offshoots and consequences of this are too vast to be really be fully grasped, but may only be hinted at, now.
If firms that occupy, for example, entire floors of downtown Denver high rises determine that they can get by with just a meeting room and a computer server room, and maybe a few other feet of office space, what does that do for the rental of that office space, other than to drive the price down? And if two hundred people on one floor from one firm became ten, what does that do to the restaurants, bars and the like downtown?
And what does it do for working conditions for those who make this shift? Already we live in a world of increasing social isolation, as books like Bowling Alone have pointed out. This shift really began in the 1950s when television kept quite a few people in their homes who previously socialized somewhat more, and often a lot more, outside of their homes prior to that. An entire nation effectively started becoming a nation of "home bodies". Now a big part of it is becoming a nation of hermits.
3. The New and Old Patterns of Life Reverse
As this occurs, some interesting and old patterns of life are suddenly reemerging. Prior to industrialization, a lot of people lived and worked at home. Indeed, almost everyone did, save for those who were employed in some outside enterprise for somebody else, who were generally relatively few in number.
Today we tend to think of only family farms like that, but that pattern of living was once very broad. Skilled tradesmen operated out of shops that were part of their homes. Doctors often practiced out of a part of their room dedicated to that purpose. Lawyers often did the same. Clergymen almost always lived in a house that was ancillary to their church, if they were full time clergymen. Most people lived and worked with their families, and the modern lifestyle of having a home life and a separate work life, and trying to achieve a "work life balance" didn't exist. . . there was only life.
Now, due to the evolution of telecommuting, which has now been much reinforced by quarantines, a lot of people are getting an exposure to the old pattern of living. Those making work calls today can often hear children in the background, or cats and dogs for that matter. Those logging into work conferences via Skype, Zoom and the like are seeing the background of a person's apartment or house, rather than their office. And spouses and pets are likely to wonder through the scene.
Of course, that doesn't apply to everyone equally and indeed its not equal among all by any means. Those people who are single and who have perhaps relished that status, or more likely accommodated themselves to the rootless modern pattern of singleness, now find themselves profoundly alone. There's no workplace social action, no workplace or singles hangouts after work, no . . . well no anything. And therefore suddenly the old reasons for some things existing are amplified and resurgent. People who formerly took a break from their desks and went out to the water cooler or coffee machine, if they're married, likely go upstairs or downstairs to the coffee maker or refrigerator. Those formerly glorified singles might do the same, but there's nobody there when they go there. That now looms as potentially permanent.
4. We're all in Rear Window Now
On top of that, in an odd sort of way, certain social relationships are rapidly changing, and perhaps for the good in some ways, and in others whose positives and negatives are yet to be seen, but which are none the less there.
In other words, we're all in Rear Window now.
Rear Window, for those who haven't seen it, and if you haven't' seen it you should, involves an international news photographer who has a badly broken leg and who is therefore spending a hot, pre air conditioning, 1954 New York summer confined to his apartment. While we're lead to believe that the photographer is well known in his field and a success. . he's dating a glamorous socialite played by Grace Kelly, he none the less lives in an apartment that's small and fairly spartan.
Just like a lot of fairly successful middle class people do right now.
Coming in 1954, the film came before television caused the massive social isolation that we have now. Indeed, while the entire film takes place in the protagonist's apartment, he lacks a television. And as he spends a lot of time looking out hsi "rear window" into the apartments of his neighbors, we know that they do as well. Radios play a role, but that's it, home entertainment wise.
Now, the point here isn't that we're all cooped up now like Jimmy Stewart's L. B. Jefferies, even though that would be a good point. No, the point is that the social leveling of our individual status is pretty obvious now, and its having a big impact.
For the first time in a long time, and indeed maybe since there were silent movie stars, the public is disgusted by being lectured or even cheered by celebrities. After quarantines were imposed a lot of stars took to the net to show how they were sharing our burdens. . . but they aren't, and that's obvious. One extremely well known and well liked entertainment figure posted scenes from backyard home quarantine, in a palatial backyard, and received a comment back "We hate you" from a viewer, something that the New York Times picked up on a article on the topic. And for the first time ever people have lined up to trash Ellen Degeneres, who has had a sort of protected star status, with claims that she's rude to common servants that she employs in one way or another.
Is Ellen rude? I have no idea and I don't even care, but the fact is that the common people now know that they're common and they're sick to death of celebrity twits.
Will this feeling last? I don't know, but I hope it does. If average Americans started falling back into themselves and approached their culture in that fashion, rather than being told how to act, and that's largely badly, by celebrities, that'd be a massively good thing coming out of a really horrific thing.
Along these lines, the differences between the haves and the have nots has been sharpened, and that is almost certain to cause developments in American life and society going forward.
A massive number of Americans who were doing fine a month ago are now out of work. At the same time, leaders in society of one kind or another who are well off, are urging the country to shut down. Perhaps their urgings are correct, but when Bill Gates, who has no expertise in infectious disease argues the country to go home, who doesn't have to worry about paying his mortgage. Lots of other people do.
That doesn't make Bill a bad guy by any means, but what is very noticable is that a sharp social divide is opening up between those who have guaranteed incomes and those who do not, and most people don't. The country is enduring lectures from those wanting everything shut in when many of those same people could spend the entire quarantine period still drawing their income, still getting their income direct deposited, and not really have to do anything for the duration. People who are living paycheck to paycheck, however, and who are now not getting paychecks, look at things differently.
This divide was already pretty wide before this happened, but it's going to be huge now. It oddly breaks as an issue right and left, including with some of the same people who look to the right and the left for answers. Concerns of this type are what helped propel Donald Trump into the Oval Office and are also what nearly made Bernie Sanders the Democratic nominee (assuming he doesn't become that) twice. And it also helps explain why a guy who lives in that world doesn't care that much about what the "liberal elite", as they imagine it, have to say.
At this point how these issues develop is an unknown. People who right now are angered by celebrities might resume following the escapades and taking the advice of Pop Tarts as soon as this is over. And it might not impact long term social views much. But it might. People who cared a few weeks ago about what some thin morally bankrupt chanteuse might have to say about something might never care again, and might instead listen a lot more to standbys and locals whom they respect. And those who vote for the extremes might be more interested in doing so now than ever, irrespective of what their self designated demographic leaders might have to tell them about anything.
5. Trusting science?
One of the people you haven't been hearing from recently is dirty magazine model Jenny McCarthy, who managed to parlay a career based on prostituting her image into a campaign against vaccinations.
That people followed a twit like McCarthy in the first place is astounding. You wouldn't walk into a local "massage parlor" for medical advice, but McCarthy's fame in the first instance was based on something that's basically in the same neighborhood. But, in fairness, she was only a well known large chested voice in a crowd of people who eschewed science.
All of a sudden real scientists are really being listened to. On the national level, diminutive Dr. Anthony Fauci towers over every other figure in the government and is listed to more than anyone. In local regions around the country, local medical experts are now listed to very closely.
It's easy to forget that public attitudes on certain professions can and do change very quickly. Prior to World War Two, for example, soldiers were looked down upon in American society for being lazy. When the war came, in converted the public image of soldiers into common men heroes, epitomized by Rockwell's Doby Gillis. In the latter stages of the Vietnam War that view changed again and soldiers were again despised, perhaps best summed up by the late 1960s song Universal Soldier, which blamed soldiers themselves for war. Veterans of the Vietnam War were looked upon as dangerous drug addicts and many keep their service secret. But then again, suddenly it changed, and they became heroes once again.
That's an extreme example, but something sort of like it has happened to science and scientists. During the 1960s scientists were societal heroes, a view fueled in no small part due to the Cold War, but not exclusively due to that. Medical advances during the Great Depression, when the Public Health Service had been very active, and during World War Two, combined to lead to great leaps in fighting infectious disease that were admired and adopted society wide. The very few people who didn't receive vaccinations as children, in school, at the time didn't receive them for religious regions and were frankly regarded with deep suspicion.
Then something happened in the 1990s and science became suspect. This seems to have come about due to the latter stages of regulations on health, safety and the environment, all of which were deeply and widely supported at first. And then in some fields science made some gaffs, which of course is common in every field of human endeavor. In recent years one of the things that has lead to is the wide practice of folk medicine and the adoption of dubious medical advice and beliefs from people who aren't qualified to render advice on anything. That's unfortunately been supported by some popular figures with actual medical training who have given fringe advice.
Suddenly, now, that's over. People are listening to real doctors again and even one of the popular fringe ones was basically told to shut the @#$@#$ up in print by a national news outlet the other day.
Science is back.
6. A more rational approach on politicians?
People have always had a love/hate relationship with politicians but in recent years, as things have become more polarized, the degree to which people are manic fans of a politician or manic opponents of one has become extreme. That seems to have suddenly died down.
Right now everyone pretty much is aware that Trump can't waive a magic wand and make Coronavirus go away and for that matter Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders can't either. That doesn't make anyone's handling of the situation or their suggested approach perfect. Both Biden and Sanders spent some time early in the pandemic suggesting that had they been President, things would have gone differently, but by now, nobody with a grasp on the situation believes that in any substantive form. He could make it worse, of course, but nobody is even really sure of the parameters of that right now other than that he could flat out ignore the recommendations of his advisors which so far he hasn't done. Trump, for the first time, seems to be really following what his advisors recommend, even while sending out conflicting messages. In the meantime, real fan boys from New York are busy giving Governor Cuomo the thumbs up and praising him, but to outsiders he's just another loud New York politician in a field seemingly full of them.
Again, we don't want to suggest that this make the Coronavirus a good thing. It doesn't. But it does seem to be waking up some realization that none of these guys is perfect and expecting them to solve everything is asking a bit much.
Indeed, while there's been little note of it, the fact that state Governors have stepped up to the plate is interesting and in fact means that things are basically operating, federalism wise, exactly how they are supposed to be.
7. Big Government
At the same time that local governments have been stepping up to the plate, suddenly everyone is okay with really huge government. Indeed, it's been stunning to see how quickly do people not only accept it, but demand it.
The size of the U.S. government grew continually in the first half of the 20th Century with very little to impede it other than custom and, briefly, the United States Supreme Court. Theodore Roosevelt expanded it by fiat, believing strongly in a big government, and then World War One expanded it, followed by the Red Scare. Following the Great Depression and World War Two ballooned it in ways never before imagined, and that was followed by the Cold War which made it seem necessary to keep on keeping on with a very large Federal government.
Starting in the 1980s there came to be a lot of questions about this, however, and Ronald Reagan campaigned on scaling the government back. That became the successful Republican mantra for years thereafter, right up to the election of Donald Trump, who promised to dismantle massive portions of the Federal government. And in fact a lot has indeed been taken down since the 1980s.
Now its roaring back and nobody is protesting it.
The thing about an expansion of the government's role is that, while it can later deflate again, it never does completely, so there's never a return to the status quo ante. When government gets bigger, it stays bigger than it had been before the event triggering that, even if it doesn't remain as large as it became.
But another way, the role of the Federal Government did decrease after World War Two, but it never returned to its pre October 1929 level. We're seeing an enormous expansion of the government's role right now. When this crisis is over, that role will decrease again, but it won't decrease to January 2019 levels, most likely.
7. The Bloom is off of the Chinese Red Rose
For an extremely long time, indeed dating back well over a century, there's been a cultural rule that China is not to be criticized. Indeed, even when there was really deep concerns about Chinese Communism and what that might mean in the Cold War, generally people were reluctant to really criticize China too directly.
There's no reason for this but the Chinese have picked up on it and have routinely used it, going into snits when any one or any government points any kind of accusatory finger at them. To make matters more pronounced, the Chinese have occasionally drawn out their role as recent history victim to quiet some opposition occasionally, as in pointing out Imperial Japan's brutality against Nationalist China or the steadfast American opposition to China during the Cold War. In the meantime China's Communist thugocracy has sponsored the theft of technology around the world, engaged in unfair trade practices, practiced a type of industrial slavery at home, and generally acted like we'd expect a surprisingly efficient, but brutal, dictatorship to act.
The Coronavirus Pandemic has changed something in this and people feel really free to criticize the Chinese regime and the practices it engaged in and allows at home for the first time. The Chinese themselves are reeling from it. Critics have pointed out that Chinese market practices gave rise to the pandemic and the typical Chinese response of "how dare you criticize us" has fallen dead flat. People are criticizing them and criticizing their inability to take criticism, and it doesn't stop there.
In Australia politicians are calling for a reassessment of the Australian economic and political relationship with China. In the U.S. the long claims that the American economy would fail without China have proven to be false. The American economy is faltering, but it's not due to China, unless we go into the Chinese wet market origins of the virus. American manufacturing, long thought more or less dead, has suddenly shown itself to be a lot more capable of responding to a crisis than anyone would have imagined.
When this is over China is not going to hold its old special status of a nation whose culture is protected from criticism and its government not to be strongly criticized. The Chinese people, for their part, would like a lot more leeway ind criticizing their government themselves and its really not clear what the virus means for the Chinese Communist Party. That party has claimed success in combating the virus but there's good reason to doubt its veracity on about anything and the methods it used were brutal. This may turn out to be a watershed moment for the Chinese government itself, and it will be one in terms of how outsiders engage China.
Health insurance was a thing a century ago, but very few Americans as a rule had it, and if they did, it was unlikely to have been provided through their employer. Indeed, it was a lot more likely, if they received any kind of health benefit from their employer, and few did, that they worked for a company that had a company doctor. Many mining companies, for example, employed a company doctor.
This changed during World War Two when the government froze wages. The government's goal, sensibly enough, was to deter inflation in an overheated job market. But as benefits were not frozen, and health insurance could be purchased by manufacturers as a benefit for employees, employers began to do that in order to entice employees to move from one company to another. And hence, the era of government sponsored health insurance arrived. And it's been with us every since, although to a declining level in recent years.
This is, of course, an example of Fifth Law of History, as well as the law of unintended results. That is, this is one of the things the Second World War changed forever (and it changed health care, we might note, in the UK as well, but in a different manner), as well as being an unintended result of a law designed to achieve something else. The government wanted to freeze wages in wartime as a hedge against inflation, employers wanted to lure employees from other firms to theirs, and nobody had thought of health insurance much before that.
That may not be the best example, but it is an example, and there are many other such things we could point to. World War One and World War Two, for example, accelerated blag migration from the South to the North, as jobs opened up, changing the demographic landscape of the country forever. The Second World War, as we've explored before, brought 4x4 trucks to the showroom floor, and that in turn brought them out to the ranches, and that in turn meant that fewer year around cowboys were needed. You get the picture.
Indeed, the last example might be the best one for our purposes here. Prior to the Second World War ranches had already evolved into largely family run businesses, but most ranches of any size continued to employ a few cowhands year around. Usually one or two of those hands lived in remote camps, in the Rocky Mountain Region, all winter long, to maintain operations, as needed, and watch for stray cattle, in the high country.
It isn't as if there were no 4x4 vehicles before the war. Indeed, they were coming on during the 1930s in a recognizable, but very specialized, form. The war changed that, and that in turn changed how people, including ranchers, but certainly not just them, went to the backcountry. And for quite a few people, that changed how they were employed.
There's something like that going on now. For at least twenty years there's been a move toward telecommuting and in some industries its very advanced. In the insurance industry, for example it is, and normally commercial insurance adjusters work out of their homes and cover regions distant from where they live. It's gone seamlessly. The companies have headquarters, but most people who work for the company don't work in them.
While exactly how it will develop cannot be really accurately foreseen now, what does seem to me to be clear is that a lot of office managers are looking at companies that are largely keeping on keeping on right now in spite of most of their key employees working from home. Those managers are now wondering why they're leasing an expensive floor in a downtown office building in, let's say, Denver, when they could reduce that space by a tenth, keep their server there, and maybe have a few employees and a conference room instead.
It's already been noted in this crisis that companies save money when workers can (effectively) telecommute. If that proves to be the case, the longer this matter goes on, the larger the percentage of the workforce that will never come back downtown to the office will be. And as that occurs, the smaller the need for large office spaces will be.
View of my office, through my computer's webcam, with me not there and elsewhere.
And the offshoots and consequences of this are too vast to be really be fully grasped, but may only be hinted at, now.
If firms that occupy, for example, entire floors of downtown Denver high rises determine that they can get by with just a meeting room and a computer server room, and maybe a few other feet of office space, what does that do for the rental of that office space, other than to drive the price down? And if two hundred people on one floor from one firm became ten, what does that do to the restaurants, bars and the like downtown?
And what does it do for working conditions for those who make this shift? Already we live in a world of increasing social isolation, as books like Bowling Alone have pointed out. This shift really began in the 1950s when television kept quite a few people in their homes who previously socialized somewhat more, and often a lot more, outside of their homes prior to that. An entire nation effectively started becoming a nation of "home bodies". Now a big part of it is becoming a nation of hermits.
3. The New and Old Patterns of Life Reverse
As this occurs, some interesting and old patterns of life are suddenly reemerging. Prior to industrialization, a lot of people lived and worked at home. Indeed, almost everyone did, save for those who were employed in some outside enterprise for somebody else, who were generally relatively few in number.
Today we tend to think of only family farms like that, but that pattern of living was once very broad. Skilled tradesmen operated out of shops that were part of their homes. Doctors often practiced out of a part of their room dedicated to that purpose. Lawyers often did the same. Clergymen almost always lived in a house that was ancillary to their church, if they were full time clergymen. Most people lived and worked with their families, and the modern lifestyle of having a home life and a separate work life, and trying to achieve a "work life balance" didn't exist. . . there was only life.
Now, due to the evolution of telecommuting, which has now been much reinforced by quarantines, a lot of people are getting an exposure to the old pattern of living. Those making work calls today can often hear children in the background, or cats and dogs for that matter. Those logging into work conferences via Skype, Zoom and the like are seeing the background of a person's apartment or house, rather than their office. And spouses and pets are likely to wonder through the scene.
Of course, that doesn't apply to everyone equally and indeed its not equal among all by any means. Those people who are single and who have perhaps relished that status, or more likely accommodated themselves to the rootless modern pattern of singleness, now find themselves profoundly alone. There's no workplace social action, no workplace or singles hangouts after work, no . . . well no anything. And therefore suddenly the old reasons for some things existing are amplified and resurgent. People who formerly took a break from their desks and went out to the water cooler or coffee machine, if they're married, likely go upstairs or downstairs to the coffee maker or refrigerator. Those formerly glorified singles might do the same, but there's nobody there when they go there. That now looms as potentially permanent.
4. We're all in Rear Window Now
On top of that, in an odd sort of way, certain social relationships are rapidly changing, and perhaps for the good in some ways, and in others whose positives and negatives are yet to be seen, but which are none the less there.
In other words, we're all in Rear Window now.
Rear Window, for those who haven't seen it, and if you haven't' seen it you should, involves an international news photographer who has a badly broken leg and who is therefore spending a hot, pre air conditioning, 1954 New York summer confined to his apartment. While we're lead to believe that the photographer is well known in his field and a success. . he's dating a glamorous socialite played by Grace Kelly, he none the less lives in an apartment that's small and fairly spartan.
Just like a lot of fairly successful middle class people do right now.
Coming in 1954, the film came before television caused the massive social isolation that we have now. Indeed, while the entire film takes place in the protagonist's apartment, he lacks a television. And as he spends a lot of time looking out hsi "rear window" into the apartments of his neighbors, we know that they do as well. Radios play a role, but that's it, home entertainment wise.
Now, the point here isn't that we're all cooped up now like Jimmy Stewart's L. B. Jefferies, even though that would be a good point. No, the point is that the social leveling of our individual status is pretty obvious now, and its having a big impact.
For the first time in a long time, and indeed maybe since there were silent movie stars, the public is disgusted by being lectured or even cheered by celebrities. After quarantines were imposed a lot of stars took to the net to show how they were sharing our burdens. . . but they aren't, and that's obvious. One extremely well known and well liked entertainment figure posted scenes from backyard home quarantine, in a palatial backyard, and received a comment back "We hate you" from a viewer, something that the New York Times picked up on a article on the topic. And for the first time ever people have lined up to trash Ellen Degeneres, who has had a sort of protected star status, with claims that she's rude to common servants that she employs in one way or another.
Is Ellen rude? I have no idea and I don't even care, but the fact is that the common people now know that they're common and they're sick to death of celebrity twits.
Will this feeling last? I don't know, but I hope it does. If average Americans started falling back into themselves and approached their culture in that fashion, rather than being told how to act, and that's largely badly, by celebrities, that'd be a massively good thing coming out of a really horrific thing.
Along these lines, the differences between the haves and the have nots has been sharpened, and that is almost certain to cause developments in American life and society going forward.
A massive number of Americans who were doing fine a month ago are now out of work. At the same time, leaders in society of one kind or another who are well off, are urging the country to shut down. Perhaps their urgings are correct, but when Bill Gates, who has no expertise in infectious disease argues the country to go home, who doesn't have to worry about paying his mortgage. Lots of other people do.
That doesn't make Bill a bad guy by any means, but what is very noticable is that a sharp social divide is opening up between those who have guaranteed incomes and those who do not, and most people don't. The country is enduring lectures from those wanting everything shut in when many of those same people could spend the entire quarantine period still drawing their income, still getting their income direct deposited, and not really have to do anything for the duration. People who are living paycheck to paycheck, however, and who are now not getting paychecks, look at things differently.
This divide was already pretty wide before this happened, but it's going to be huge now. It oddly breaks as an issue right and left, including with some of the same people who look to the right and the left for answers. Concerns of this type are what helped propel Donald Trump into the Oval Office and are also what nearly made Bernie Sanders the Democratic nominee (assuming he doesn't become that) twice. And it also helps explain why a guy who lives in that world doesn't care that much about what the "liberal elite", as they imagine it, have to say.
At this point how these issues develop is an unknown. People who right now are angered by celebrities might resume following the escapades and taking the advice of Pop Tarts as soon as this is over. And it might not impact long term social views much. But it might. People who cared a few weeks ago about what some thin morally bankrupt chanteuse might have to say about something might never care again, and might instead listen a lot more to standbys and locals whom they respect. And those who vote for the extremes might be more interested in doing so now than ever, irrespective of what their self designated demographic leaders might have to tell them about anything.
5. Trusting science?
One of the people you haven't been hearing from recently is dirty magazine model Jenny McCarthy, who managed to parlay a career based on prostituting her image into a campaign against vaccinations.
That people followed a twit like McCarthy in the first place is astounding. You wouldn't walk into a local "massage parlor" for medical advice, but McCarthy's fame in the first instance was based on something that's basically in the same neighborhood. But, in fairness, she was only a well known large chested voice in a crowd of people who eschewed science.
All of a sudden real scientists are really being listened to. On the national level, diminutive Dr. Anthony Fauci towers over every other figure in the government and is listed to more than anyone. In local regions around the country, local medical experts are now listed to very closely.
It's easy to forget that public attitudes on certain professions can and do change very quickly. Prior to World War Two, for example, soldiers were looked down upon in American society for being lazy. When the war came, in converted the public image of soldiers into common men heroes, epitomized by Rockwell's Doby Gillis. In the latter stages of the Vietnam War that view changed again and soldiers were again despised, perhaps best summed up by the late 1960s song Universal Soldier, which blamed soldiers themselves for war. Veterans of the Vietnam War were looked upon as dangerous drug addicts and many keep their service secret. But then again, suddenly it changed, and they became heroes once again.
That's an extreme example, but something sort of like it has happened to science and scientists. During the 1960s scientists were societal heroes, a view fueled in no small part due to the Cold War, but not exclusively due to that. Medical advances during the Great Depression, when the Public Health Service had been very active, and during World War Two, combined to lead to great leaps in fighting infectious disease that were admired and adopted society wide. The very few people who didn't receive vaccinations as children, in school, at the time didn't receive them for religious regions and were frankly regarded with deep suspicion.
Then something happened in the 1990s and science became suspect. This seems to have come about due to the latter stages of regulations on health, safety and the environment, all of which were deeply and widely supported at first. And then in some fields science made some gaffs, which of course is common in every field of human endeavor. In recent years one of the things that has lead to is the wide practice of folk medicine and the adoption of dubious medical advice and beliefs from people who aren't qualified to render advice on anything. That's unfortunately been supported by some popular figures with actual medical training who have given fringe advice.
Suddenly, now, that's over. People are listening to real doctors again and even one of the popular fringe ones was basically told to shut the @#$@#$ up in print by a national news outlet the other day.
Science is back.
6. A more rational approach on politicians?
Huey Long addressing the Senate.
People have always had a love/hate relationship with politicians but in recent years, as things have become more polarized, the degree to which people are manic fans of a politician or manic opponents of one has become extreme. That seems to have suddenly died down.
Right now everyone pretty much is aware that Trump can't waive a magic wand and make Coronavirus go away and for that matter Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders can't either. That doesn't make anyone's handling of the situation or their suggested approach perfect. Both Biden and Sanders spent some time early in the pandemic suggesting that had they been President, things would have gone differently, but by now, nobody with a grasp on the situation believes that in any substantive form. He could make it worse, of course, but nobody is even really sure of the parameters of that right now other than that he could flat out ignore the recommendations of his advisors which so far he hasn't done. Trump, for the first time, seems to be really following what his advisors recommend, even while sending out conflicting messages. In the meantime, real fan boys from New York are busy giving Governor Cuomo the thumbs up and praising him, but to outsiders he's just another loud New York politician in a field seemingly full of them.
Again, we don't want to suggest that this make the Coronavirus a good thing. It doesn't. But it does seem to be waking up some realization that none of these guys is perfect and expecting them to solve everything is asking a bit much.
Indeed, while there's been little note of it, the fact that state Governors have stepped up to the plate is interesting and in fact means that things are basically operating, federalism wise, exactly how they are supposed to be.
7. Big Government
At the same time that local governments have been stepping up to the plate, suddenly everyone is okay with really huge government. Indeed, it's been stunning to see how quickly do people not only accept it, but demand it.
The size of the U.S. government grew continually in the first half of the 20th Century with very little to impede it other than custom and, briefly, the United States Supreme Court. Theodore Roosevelt expanded it by fiat, believing strongly in a big government, and then World War One expanded it, followed by the Red Scare. Following the Great Depression and World War Two ballooned it in ways never before imagined, and that was followed by the Cold War which made it seem necessary to keep on keeping on with a very large Federal government.
Starting in the 1980s there came to be a lot of questions about this, however, and Ronald Reagan campaigned on scaling the government back. That became the successful Republican mantra for years thereafter, right up to the election of Donald Trump, who promised to dismantle massive portions of the Federal government. And in fact a lot has indeed been taken down since the 1980s.
Now its roaring back and nobody is protesting it.
The thing about an expansion of the government's role is that, while it can later deflate again, it never does completely, so there's never a return to the status quo ante. When government gets bigger, it stays bigger than it had been before the event triggering that, even if it doesn't remain as large as it became.
But another way, the role of the Federal Government did decrease after World War Two, but it never returned to its pre October 1929 level. We're seeing an enormous expansion of the government's role right now. When this crisis is over, that role will decrease again, but it won't decrease to January 2019 levels, most likely.
7. The Bloom is off of the Chinese Red Rose
For an extremely long time, indeed dating back well over a century, there's been a cultural rule that China is not to be criticized. Indeed, even when there was really deep concerns about Chinese Communism and what that might mean in the Cold War, generally people were reluctant to really criticize China too directly.
There's no reason for this but the Chinese have picked up on it and have routinely used it, going into snits when any one or any government points any kind of accusatory finger at them. To make matters more pronounced, the Chinese have occasionally drawn out their role as recent history victim to quiet some opposition occasionally, as in pointing out Imperial Japan's brutality against Nationalist China or the steadfast American opposition to China during the Cold War. In the meantime China's Communist thugocracy has sponsored the theft of technology around the world, engaged in unfair trade practices, practiced a type of industrial slavery at home, and generally acted like we'd expect a surprisingly efficient, but brutal, dictatorship to act.
The Coronavirus Pandemic has changed something in this and people feel really free to criticize the Chinese regime and the practices it engaged in and allows at home for the first time. The Chinese themselves are reeling from it. Critics have pointed out that Chinese market practices gave rise to the pandemic and the typical Chinese response of "how dare you criticize us" has fallen dead flat. People are criticizing them and criticizing their inability to take criticism, and it doesn't stop there.
In Australia politicians are calling for a reassessment of the Australian economic and political relationship with China. In the U.S. the long claims that the American economy would fail without China have proven to be false. The American economy is faltering, but it's not due to China, unless we go into the Chinese wet market origins of the virus. American manufacturing, long thought more or less dead, has suddenly shown itself to be a lot more capable of responding to a crisis than anyone would have imagined.
When this is over China is not going to hold its old special status of a nation whose culture is protected from criticism and its government not to be strongly criticized. The Chinese people, for their part, would like a lot more leeway ind criticizing their government themselves and its really not clear what the virus means for the Chinese Communist Party. That party has claimed success in combating the virus but there's good reason to doubt its veracity on about anything and the methods it used were brutal. This may turn out to be a watershed moment for the Chinese government itself, and it will be one in terms of how outsiders engage China.
