[2019-nCoV]

> As precedent, I cite the 1918 flu. In 1918 people were getting arrested for not wearing masks. The following decade was called "The Roaring '20s," and I don't presume it roared because of all the social distancing and masks. All of us reading were born later, and if we heard about the 1918 flu, maybe in a history class as I remember, most of us probably reacted with ... "what? what's so bad about a flu?"

You can't compare pandemics — nothing happens in a vacuum. It's 2020. The Spanish flu was shroud by WWI. The Roaring 20s was a post-war boom, meanwhile we haven't even fought the upcoming Sino war. Most haven't experienced such economic hardship in their lives. Globalisation was a pipe dream a century ago, it's now the backbone of every developed economy.

[asveikau]

I think you're somewhat making my point though. Sitting in 1919 you could look at the horrible pandemic with so many lives lost and said, gee, life will never be the same, daily life will change a lot from this. (Yeah, I guess the war was a big deal too.) There are lots of photos going around these days saying how serious it was. Then a bunch of other important stuff happened. Including the entire lives of everybody reading this. And the pandemic from last century was not the most important thing.

[2019-nCoV]

How would people even contemplate changing their lives in 1919? There were no flights. No option to work remotely. No Zoom. No Amazon. No food delivery. No Netflix. No Tinder. The world was not ready. Timing is everything.