In my earlier blogs on the COVID-19 virus I expressed concern that the virus could mutate into something much worse. I stated at the time that it wasn’t likely, so I hedged my bets. And, in fact, so far there is no evidence of such a mutation. Instead, there seems to be a gradual weakening of the virus, as noted above. My greater concern in March, however, was the economic fallout of the lockdowns. I feared that the widespread shutdown of business activity could result in another Great Depression. I was right about the economic fallout of the lockdowns, but the economic depression I feared has not arrived. Instead of 25% unemployment, the US topped out at less than 15% and is now closer to 10%, a depression to those who lost their job, but not an imminent end to the whole economic order. So the economy has fared better than I expected.
I was also concerned in March that a combination of the virus, the lockdowns and the economic disruption could lead to looting and rioting. A major reason for this concern was the breakdown of the social order in a post-Christian culture. I didn’t think American society had the resilience it used to have when Protestant faith was a common cultural heritage. This projection has turned out to be quite prescient, in fact, it has been much more widespread than even I could have expected. But I certainly missed that the rioting and looting would be over issues of race. Certainly, no one could have predicted the specific George Floyd incident or how it would impact the whole country. But the three things (fear of COVID, economic disruption and racial tensions) have combined with a fractious election season to keep everyone just a little on edge.
I made a number of other projections back in March. I suggested that the COVID crisis might be the end of higher education as we knew it. Until now, it has been a general perception that face to face education with expert teachers is the gold standard. But the coronavirus forced even the Harvards and Yales of this world to move to online education, blurring the difference between top-quality education and for-profit schooling. Why would students pay top dollar to study at home when they could cover many of the same subjects for much less online? The jury is still out on this one, but so far most students have stuck with the tradition powerhouse schools even though the teaching is in “Zoom” format. Why settle for second best when you can “dance with the stars”?
I made two other projections in March. First, I suggested that there would be a long-term decline in tourism and international travel. So far this has been on target. I recently visited the grandkids in Hawaii and my guess is that domestic air travel is operating at about 20% right now. International travel is even less and most travel seems to be for business or family events. Tourism for tourism’s sake (as in cruise ships and adventure travel) has not come back. It will probably be a long time before tourism reaches levels we took for granted before. Second, I predicted a major decline in the restaurant industry and in-person retail. Both of these have occurred. Some restaurants and retail chains are not coming back. But the discovery that you don’t generally pass the virus with food has enabled many “take-out” establishments to survive and some even to thrive. And many of us miss strolling through the aisles of our favorite mall or department store. So all may not be lost in this area.
All in all I think I got more right than wrong. But then a stopped clock gets it right at least twice a day also, perhaps I was just lucky. Having said that, “Day ain’t over yet!” We’ll see where this adventure leads us. In the final blog of this trilogy I will talk about the heavy impact this crisis has had on us and offer a bit of biblical advice.
Tag Archives: coronavirus
COVID-19: How My Mind Has Changed or Stayed the Same
I plan to continue my series of blogs on Sunday Laws and Bible Prophecy. But the current situation with COVID-19, lockdowns, racial tensions, and frantic election messages call for some comment, which I will offer in three blogs this week. I am not an expert on the science and psychology of contagious disease. But for more than two decades I have been teaching people how to evaluate truth claims on the internet. So sharing a bit of my current mindset may be helpful to you in dealing with the challenges we face. I am open to correction in the following, it is a work in progress.
Back at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis I made a number of statements as to what was going on and where it might lead us. I thought it would be interesting to review some of my comments and assess where I was right and where I was wrong. A good journalist doesn’t just focus on successful projections, but seeks to learn from mistaken assessments and faulty predictions.
One of the things I predicted was that, like most viruses, it would weaken in the warmer weather, giving us a respite from its malevolence. That turned out to be completely wrong. If anything, it seemed to become more contagious in the northern summer. I should have paid more attention to the early surge of cases in Singapore, which has hot and humid weather all year long. If the virus could thrive there, summer was not likely to help us much in the temperate zone. But while there was a major surge of virus cases in the southern and western states of the USA in June and July, the number of deaths relative to cases was much lower than it had been in the northern spring. One reason could be a weakening of the virus (see below), which is a normal occurrence. But it also may reflect a larger percentage of younger people being infected. In the spring a high percentage of cases were in nursing homes, in the summer it was hitting younger and healthier populations.
I noted early on that viruses tend to weaken over time. That is a prediction that seems to be fulfilling itself at this time. Doctor friends are telling me that the cases they are seeing are not as severe as they were in spring. The reason viruses weaken over time is because they, like us, want to live. It doesn’t serve them well to kill their hosts, as they will likely die with the host. So the more deadly strains of a virus “kill themselves off” and the less deadly ones survive, as a result, over time viruses become less deadly. It is too early to be sure, but some weakening of the virus seems to be occurring as I write. While cases continue to spike in various place, death rates appear to be dropping nearly everywhere.
One thing we didn’t know at the beginning was that it would turn out to be rare that someone get infected by the coronavirus while out of doors. We were afraid every time we left the house. But exercise out of doors has not proved to be very dangerous. While even asymptomatic people can pass on the virus for a time, I understand that it requires prolonged exposure to become infected. While large crowds gathered to protest in early June, the virus spike at that time was almost nationwide, it was not confined to the places where large numbers of people gathered to protest. So the degree to which large outdoor gatherings contributed to the spike in infections in June and July is not clear. The greater danger seems to be even small gatherings of strangers indoors (as in restaurants, movie theaters, casinos, and yes, church services). It is people, not food, that enables the virus to move from one host to another.
I predicted at the beginning that the lockdowns and strong measures would prove to be an over-reaction. I think “the jury is still out” on that one. One issue is that we still don’t know how widespread COVID-19 is and was. Recent anti-body studies suggest two interesting things. 1) Perhaps ten times as many people have been exposed to the virus as the number of known cases would indicate. 2) The virus was in the western USA in the Fall of 2019 already. If both are true, the virus would be far less deadly than we thought, and we might be closer to “herd immunity” (where enough people have been exposed to halt the wide spread of a contagious disease) than we think. That would not make it any less of a tragedy for those severely affected and for those who lost loved ones, but it would mean the virus is not as severe a public health threat as we had feared. Having said that, the lockdowns made perfect sense back in March, given what little we knew at the time. It is not clear what to make of the difference between the numbers we get from testing and the numbers that turn up from anti-body studies, so the jury is still out on whether the lockdowns were necessary or were an over-reaction. We may never know for sure.