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kleinbl00  ·  1485 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: US jobless claims soar past 3 million to record high

    I honestly wonder what will happen to the world economy.

It will decline and then at some point, rebuild. It will likely not arise to the same level quickly. There will be winners and losers. Centers of commerce are likely to shift around a little.

    Most countries are still dealing with just the first wave, and since SARS-CoV-2 is likely to go endemic (i.e. we'll probably have a corona season just like we have a flu season) this is not going to stop until we have a vaccination and probably not even then (we have a vaccination for influenza but it hasn't disappeared).

Here's the thing: right now it's a novel coronavirus which means nobody has ever seen it before. One of the reasons the symptoms are so varied is it's hitting everyone for the first time. Once you have antibodies you will have defense against coronavirus. Perfect defense? Certainly not - but enough of a defense that the severity will go down. Most importantly, not everyone will have it for the first time at exactly the same time. We'll have a covid season like we have a flu season and we'll have covid shots like we have flu shots and covid will kill mostly old people but it won't do it all at once so we won't have to worry about emergency rooms being flooded.

Flu is a drag on productivity. Thing of it is, it's a drag on productivity that has been a part of commerce since Thag and Ag were selling each other rocks. This whole "stop the world for six months" thing we're doing now we won't have to do again for covid. Some other goddamn disease? I mean there's nothing preventing it other than everyone getting their shit together and having a better pandemic plan in place.