Comment by eirini1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eirini1 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think its funny that you mention 9/11 as an example there because most people I know would agree that the whole world completely changed after 9/11 (and I'm not even American myself). Both on a cultural and social level, there is no event before the COVID-19 outbreak that changed the world more.

You are correct - in a world where production was organized on a rational level, to serve certain needs or desires, the coronavirus outbreak would not have been as big of an issue. However we live in a world where profit and markets regulate production, and these are far from rational. Hence, unless massive changes come to how production is organized, the article has a very good point and you are the one who is looking at matters much too sober I think.

>Both on a cultural and social level, there is no event before the COVID-19 outbreak that changed the world more.

Let's be serious here for a second. We had the collapse of the Soviet Union, the creation of the internet, the emancipation of women, the civil rights era, The Great Leap Foward etc. Everyone can name two dozen things over the last few decades that changed the world more than this.

Currently everyone is behaving like their college aged selves, sitting in their apartment playing Animal Crossing and ordering pizza for a few months. Humanity has endured greater change. I think some people need to turn the news off for a hot second and evaluate if they've gotten a little too soft over the years. Ask people in Africa if the world has changed, a continent with 25% of the world's disease burden and 1% of healthcare spending, this is just background noise over there

> Both on a cultural and social level, there is no event before the COVID-19 outbreak that changed the world more.

Err, you mean this is worse than the world wars? I have my sincere doubts.

We've seen economies bounce back from near total destruction of cities (e.g. Japan after WWII, Korea after the Korean War). That was worse than this.

Our current situation is bad, but the underlying structure of the economy was fine before the virus hit. That gives us a much better starting point for rebuilding the economy than we had after previous disasters or recessions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com