> people are planning for the end of COVID-19 by Jan

Unfortunately a virus doesn't care about people's plans.

Perhaps there are multiple factors involved. For example the IPCC email scandal, or the fact that complex mathematical forecasting models involve a lot of hand-wavey guesswork (Neal Ferguson's COVID model the latest example), or that the earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling over millennia.

So sorry for those who can't read deeply. Berenson is a master of boiling things down to very pithy arguments. I find him to be excellent because he says things more succinctly than anyone.

To call him a sourceless source, though is calumny. His book on COVID-19 was the number 2 book on Amazon last week. The bibliography is a big percentage of the text. Buy it some time and be educated.

When was it true that "this time it's different?"

The dot-com implosion meant that you can't go public without revenue. The bar for IPOs then shifted far upward (even irrationally so) and has remained there since.

9/11 permanently moved the bar on state surveillance, war powers granted the president, and screenings. That mostly hadn't happened after prior hijackings or accidents.

The Columbia disaster killed the Space Shuttle Program.

There are many events that permanently transform affected systems. Coronavirus is a once in a century curveball and we are in the first chapter of many in the COVID-19 book. Many things will change. We don't know how many yet.

Our surprisingly-terrible reaction to COVID, due to the reasons cited in this thread, made me think of an (I think) interesting book/show plot.

What if there was an epidemic virus, that, within a year +/- a few months of contraction, killed hosts over the age of X (20, 50, 70), regardless of underlying health conditions.

It raises some interesting questions! The three I’ve come up with so far:

(1) what does a society look like, without (mature, older, very old) people? What surprising positive and negative evolutions occur?

(2) how would our current societies react to the gradual onset and eventual global expansion of such a disease?

(3) if we found a cure for the disease a few (now, shorter than previously) generations later, who would take it?

It’s kind of similar Lord of the Flies, except instead of a shipwreck, it’s a disease and it happens gradually, to preexisting societies and cultures.