Mike Solana

Many things need to go right for us to go “back to normal”. A vaccine or treatment must be discovered & scaled. It needs to be widely adopted despite anti-vaxx skepticism. Enough businesses need to remain solvent over this time. This isn’t impossible, but it’s not certain.

seems right, but why wasn’t it necessary to end the spanish flu pandemic?

It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.

it's interesting, because we have similar stories of people in america then wearing masks and keeping out of public for some time, which means people understood at least roughly how this worked and still chose to return. essential then, or was life just valued differently?

An important question. My short answer is: we didn’t have alternatives then. People dealt with horse manure for generations till we had the automobile. Similarly, the pandemic is already catalyzing a hygiene 2.0 movement in Asia based on tech/internet.https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1235029374593687553 …

folks in tech have alternatives (though just as many companies seem to be suffering as are thriving). but the average american can’t work from a laptop. video, delivery, and streaming entertainment are all great, but people want their jobs back. they’re going to demand we return.