In doing some reading recently, the conditions we are living in are really no different than those surrounding the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. Businesses closed. Schools closed. Places where large gatherings happened closed. In Minnesota, there were two month-long closures in late 1918. Theaters and retailers closed. Schools were closed. It all seems kind of familiar. Leaders at the city level of both Minneapolis and St. Paul recommended that people keep their distance from others. To me, that sounds quite a lot like social distancing. Not much has changed in 100 years.
Think about that for a moment. The people living in 1918 managed for two one-month periods to not completely crumble and stemmed what would have likely been a tidal wave of deaths. Minnesota as a whole fared fairly well with only 7,260 deaths attributed to the Spanish Flu. That was over the course of one year or less. Numbers like that can still be expected, in my opinion, even though were aren't yet to 400 COVID-19 deaths in Minnesota. Regardless of the numbers, COVID-19 is a marathon unlike the Spanish Flu which was fast and overwhelming to the doctors and nurses who attempted to treat the ill.
In the end, though, Minnesotans and Americans overcame the invisible enemy in 1918 and will do so again in the battle against COVID-19. The question which remains is what will be lost and what will be left?
While this is only speculation, many of these events and happenings being canceled is simply a matter of time.
- High School Proms
- High School Graduations
- Summer Festivals
- Fourth of July Celebrations
- County Fairs
- Minnesota State Fair
Many events will be severely altered.
- Major League Baseball
- NHL regular season and playoffs
- NBA regular season and playoffs
- NCAA football season
- NFL season
- NCAA hockey
- 2020-21 high school sports
Businesses WILL close permanently. When we enter the post-COVID world, there will be far fewer restaurants and retail stores. High unemployment rates will linger for years, maybe as long a decade. Your 401k will be decimated. Homeless rates will certainly increase. This has the potential to be multitudes worse that the Great Depression.
It doesn't have to be that bad, though. The mishandling of this pandemic stems from a lack of federal leadership. There has been denial of the truth from day one. We lost two months of valuable preparation time because the nation's president denied that a pandemic was coming. He kept having campaign rallies and blaming the media and Democrats. The reality is that our nation's governors will be the ones to get us through to the end of 2020. They are doing their absolute best to keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. They also have the power to unite and rebuild America quickly.
What comes out of this storm in late 2021 depends on how the next eight months are handled both by the government and American citizens. Keeping people afloat will take hard work and many trillions of additional dollars to jumpstart a different sort of economy. We can come out of this with an economy driven by improvements instead of unbridled consumerism. We will still buy stuff – that's inevitable – but we will invest in things which improves our world's future.
Together we can and will get through this. We can be more self-sufficient both as people and as a country. We can thrive.
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