I feel like coronavirus has done more than just be a pandemic. It has shown flaws in systems, flaws in human behavior, and compromised situations.
So I am curious, where DO we go from here? What do things look like for the future? Do different laws need passed to try and alleviate the occurrences we had this time? What do you see?
I definitely do think that it has highlighted some of the bigger problems with some of the established "normal business" of government, at least in the UK, but hey it's not like its not been clear that there have been problems for a long time, westminister elites and the UKCP had already rendered the country unable to deal with bad weather and flooding.
If anything at all it has demonstrated that it is possible for elites and governments characterised by entrenched privilege, in fact with defending old money and privilege as their very core principles, to maintain themselves in office despite it all and remain popular with micro adjustments and manipulations. I dont expect it to change.
It could get worse. In fact I think it will and next time it will be something even simpler that could decimate the population causing wider spread death and trauma than any single spree killer or some similar criminal action could have done. Part of the problem is that the elites are totally out of ideas. They've got nothing other than what they already tried and found has not worked. They cant even come up with entertaining or amusing lies anymore and their front men and women are totally and utterly pathetic, so I would expect to see more and more of politics as a bizarre sort of amateur theatre or long running farce production.
There are certain societies, and I think the anglosphere is very like this, in which there are expectations which have gotten so, so bad, so low, that they dont challenge a lot of misconduct that they really should, they expect poor or none existent service for instance. That is one part of the population, a kind of acceptance of "we cant have nice things", or even "the basics", and increasingly a confusion between "the basics" and "nice things". Then there is this other part of the population, whose expectations are way, way, way too high and who've never had to reign their expectations in, those are the tax dodgers, evaders, shirkers, and that's a big, big problem too, they wont accept even very minor, meager adjustments in taxation, ON PRINCIPLE.
So you end up with the laughable situation in which a country like the UK can bluff that they are super power, sailing nuclear subs around the world etc. and they cant even protect nurses, doctors, cleaners while they go about their day to day business of fighting a disease pandemic. I really find it hard to believe that anywhere that disease or bad weather has beat could possibly make a go of things in a stand up fight or protracted conflagration. However, it didnt take the pandemic to make that clear. There's none so blind as will not see and falling back on racism, sectarianism, a bunch of other vague prejudices which amount to fiddling while rome burns is what we can expect, in the UK at least.
The other big thing which I think hasnt really been spotlighted is just how disease did spread, to places like the UK for instance, and island state. I expected the racists to make more out of this and blame immigration, which, sure, the could, and for some people that'd be enough to not trouble themselves with thinking about it any longer. Although, seriously, that wasnt it. They kept the borders open for the privileged. They also kept the black markets that supply the privileged running too. No shortages of cocaine in westminister or the city of london for instance. There's little in the way of focus on that kind of thing and I expect it to remain that way too.
