What history can tell us about a post-Covid world
NOTE: This was written in April of 2021.
Let’s turn that title into a question: what can history teach us about the post-Covid world? The answer is: not too fucking much. That’s because the world is ever-changing, and the circumstances of daily living from days gone by are much different from those of today. One thing we can say is that the world will be changed. Just how it will change won’t involve looking at shit that happened a century or a millennium ago, but rather over the past year.
That said, let’s take a look at shit that went down a while back anyway.
Christians didn’t used to be a bunch of fucking dicks. I mean yeah there are some nice Christians around today; I know some nice Christians. They are the ones I call “Here, you can take half of my sandwich” Christians. Then there are the “You’re gonna burn in hell” Christians, and they are made of douche. They’re the ones that blare “Proud Christian” in their Twitter profile right next to “MAGA.” Fuck them with a cactus.
Anyway, plagues are nothing new, but medicine not totally sucking is. Prior to the 20th century, our state of medical knowledge was so shitty that 50% of people died before the age of 15. For real. Once you were born, you had a 25% chance at not living to see your first birthday, and were just as likely to die before your mid-teens as not. Sucked.
Disease had a lot to do with that. People lived in constant fear of sickness, and when a plague showed up a lot of people said fuck this and noped out. Especially the rich ones. They fled to get away from those hacking, sore-covered, snot-nosed plague carriers because ew gross I’m too rich to die get the fuck away from me.
Except the Christians. The Christians didn’t flee.
The period I’m talking about begins in the second century. AKA back when Christianity had not yet been warped into a tool of global control: give me all your fucking money don’t put your penis there God is watching. I’m not saying it was all rainbows and puppy hugs Christianity. There have always been dicks and I bet Christianity had its dicks back then, too, people trading daughters for goats and shit. But at least in the case at hand, there is evidence that when everyone else fucked off during the Antonine plague in the Roman Empire starting in 165, the Christians stayed behind and tended the sick. They embraced that “Do unto others/ Love your neighbor/ lay down his life for his friends” stuff. FYI, the Antonine plague was believed to be either smallpox or measles, one of which we no longer have to worry about, because science, and another we still do have to worry about, because anti-vaccine ass monkeys.
Anyway, the Christians did the same thing again a century later with the Plague of Cyprian. The bishop Dionysius said, “Heedless of danger” the Christians “took charge of the sick, attending to their every need.” They did this whether people were Christian or not, although they probably did a bit of preaching to the unbelievers among the sick folks about how fucking awesome that Jesus guy is.
And because these people were being looked after, a lot of them recovered and were pretty fucking grateful. And the Christians were all hey don’t thank us, thank Jesus. And many said yes, I will thank Jesus, tell me more. And Christianity fucking exploded and here we are almost two thousand years later with Christ followers comprising the largest religious group in the world.
So that happened.
Then in 14th century Europe there was a thing called the Black Death, which I suspect you’ve heard of. Lotta people died. Like, a third of people. Think of everyone you know, and kiss one out of every three goodbye. Actually, don’t kiss them. They have the plague, and that shit’s nasty. It kills motherfuckers. A third of motherfuckers.
Just like how the aftereffects of that third century Roman Empire plague transformed the world, so did the Black Death, but in a completely different way. With a third of people dead, there was a labor shortage, and this served to end feudalism. People were all haha my toiling in the fields is an in-demand skill now motherfucker take this serfdom shit and suck on it, Baron Fuckface. And people fucked off in search of better wages because motherfucking supply and demand, bitches.
Feudalism ending wasn’t exactly a smooth process, because people with money are loath to give it up. England had a thing called The Peasants Revolt in 1381 because people were pissed at the crown for trying to cap their wages. The revolt didn’t go so well for the peasants, but the plague proved to be a historical turning point that eventually led to the developing of a middle class as opposed to 85% of the population living in the crushing poverty of serfdom.
Finally, let’s look at a plague that some people are old enough to remember. Not many people, but a few are probably still kicking around somewhere. I’m talking about the misnamed Spanish Flu.
It began in 1918, while World War I was still going on, and it ended up infecting half a billion people, which at the time was a third of the entire planet. Ten percent of the people who caught it—around 50 million people—died. Other estimates say it might have had a death toll as high as 100 million. Harsh. And even with bodies piling up in the streets, there were anti-mask cockwaffles back then, too. Assholes.
Why did they call it the Spanish Flu? Because that country was the first to report on it. Spain was neutral in the war and didn’t have media blackouts. It’s hard to know where it began, but it might actually have been in Kansas.
So, a shit-ton of people died. What happened next? The roaring whoring 20s happened. People were sick of living in fear and having to shutter businesses and stay home, same as what we’re experiencing now, and they fucking parrttaaayyyyeeeddd. There was a legit baby boom in the 20s, because people were fucking like bunnies. Yeah, they’re hot and I’m drunk and they probably don’t have the flu so let’s rub slippery bits, they said.
But the era wasn’t a party for everyone. The flu usually takes the very young and the very old, but not this one. The Spanish Flu mostly hit people 20 to 40, and more often men. A lot of breadwinners were either made very sick, or they died. Many kids became orphans. For pregnant women who caught it, it often caused miscarriages or physical and cognitive impairments in their offspring.
Another shitty legacy of the Spanish Flu was the desperate embracing of pseudoscientific alternative medicine bullshit. I was a health and fitness writer for a decade and spent a lot of time exposing that crap. I’m also married to real medical doctor, and have an appreciation for stuff that works over stuff that charlatans hawk to line their pockets, so miss me with your naturopathic bullshit. Where was I? Oh, yeah, that fucking bullshit took off because the state of medicine in 1919 was still pretty shitty and science couldn’t stop people from dying so a lot of people were just fuck you science. Gimme some of that snake oil. And now we have immoral ass buckets selling shark cartilage and saying it cures cancer.
Fuck your raspberry ketones, and fuck Dr. Oz too.
Except in China. Back then they were more about traditional Chinese “medicine,” which is bullshit, and that didn’t fucking work to stop a metric shit-ton of their population dying from the flu. So many Chinese started to say fuck this TCM stuff lets try science. And the west was more fuck this science stuff let’s try TCM. Derp. It’s worth noting that part of the loss of faith in science was that one of the medicines back then that did have its uses was aspirin, so doctors were telling people to take a shitload of it. Too much, in fact, and people died from aspirin poisoning too. Oops.
Another thing that happened post-Spanish Flu was the embracing of socialized medicine, although the U.S. missed the memo on that one.
Okay, so what now?
As I’ve shown, the only thing history can really tell us is that when there is a major pandemic, it has the power to transform society. But exactly how that transformation manifests is dependent upon the prevailing circumstances of the era in which the plague takes place. If we want to know what happens next, we need to look at what’s happening now.
Actually, I lied. There is one thing we can predict, and that’s a transitory period. The worst of Covid should be over early in 2022. But it’s not going to be a hard stop with a thank fuck that’s done. Because it won’t be done. We will enter an intermediary period lasting a year or two as things gradually return to “normal.”
What’s that going to look like, that normal? As I said, we need to look at right now. What are we seeing?
First off, we’re seeing less death than with other historically horrific pandemics. As of writing, Covid has killed fewer than 3 million people. And most of those who succumb to it are no longer in the workforce, so it’s not going to give people leverage to drive up the minimum wage. But it can fuck up plenty of the survivors. We may see three or four million people in the U.S. alone with lasting disabilities, either physical or cognitive or both, due to Covid. That’s going to have a significant negative impact on the economy.
But we’re also gonna fuckin’ party.
As in the 1920s, later in the 2020s we are gonna freak the fuck out and drink and play and travel and use our genitals to spread non-Covid diseases and make babies, just don’t ask me to shake hands, okay? I mean the lucky ones will. The poors won’t. As is often their lot throughout history (it sure was during the Black Death, because the rich hid in their castles), poor people bear the brunt of infections, are most likely to die, become even further impoverished, and have a higher rate of lasting negative health consequences.
But yeah fuck them let’s get hammered and bump uglies on a tropical vacation. Sarcasm. But there will be plenty who don’t fucking care. Conversely, there might be enough who do care that the desire to do something about it transforms society. Maybe.
Women’s participation in the labor market has taken a major hit, because they experienced greater job loss and were also handed the burden of caring for kids who couldn’t go to school, as well as caring for sick family members. It could take many years to recover from that.
The for-profit healthcare industry in the U.S. is a mega-billion-dollar behemoth that will not die quietly, but the health crisis caused by Covid could take the country further down the road of not fucking over the majority of its citizens who get sick, break a bone, or have a baby. Enough people are realizing and getting pissed off with the state of healthcare in the U.S. that perhaps the needle is moving far enough to take some actual action. It won’t happen overnight, because it never does. A country doesn’t magically get healthcare because some mitten-wearing curmudgeon who styles his hair with a balloon waves a magic wand. Canada’s universal healthcare system took many years of fighting to bring about, and it still doesn’t cover things like vision and teeth.
Universal Basic Income may become a thing in more countries, but the U.S. will be one of the last, I expect, because Americans hate each other too much. Democratic socialist countries like the ones in Scandinavia are very homogenous. Denmark is almost 98% white, and so they’re okay with a strong social safety net that protects everyone because “everyone” looks just like them. It’s a sad state in much of humanity that too many of us just don’t like people who aren’t the same color as we are, and so we’re not willing to have our tax dollars going to care for people who aren’t the same as us. And there is far more racial diversity in the U.S., which makes accepting socialist ideals more challenging.
There’s more to it than that, such as a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” conservative mentality that permeates American society, as well as decades of right-wing rhetoric that proclaims anything to the left of hunting the homeless for sport is communism. But ethnic diversity is absolutely a barrier to UBI in the U.S. Trump fans would be shrieking about dem dam immigints comin’ hear an takin’ all are money bunch a fuckin’ freeloaders blahMAGAbarf.
On a brighter side, it’s a safe bet a lot of people are going to be doing more work from home, which will be better for the environment. Also, there could be an increase in belief in science because vaccines are going to be what gets this under control. There will still be the dumbfuck QAnon anti-vaccine jackwagons—there will always be those people—but this could be a turning point with more people embracing science after seeing how thoughts and prayers and Vitamin D didn’t do shit.
One constant throughout history is that wealth concentrates toward a center. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. popularized this quote by 19thcentury Unitarian minister and slavery abolitionist Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Right now, that may seem like bullshit, because justice is uneven. It is uneven because it’s not the universe doing the work; the universe doesn’t give a shit about us. The moral arc is solely under human control, which makes improvements in our collective well-being far from inevitable. Enough people have to decide to do something.
Wealth hoarding is a sickness that the ultra-rich embrace. Who needs two billion dollars? Someone with only one billion, apparently. A lot of those fuckers got richer during this pandemic, and they’re not going to want to give any of it back. We will have to see if Covid has created enough of a sea change in societal values to make them share, even just a little.
Pandemics suck. But if you can take one bit of solace from this one, it’s this: It is a near certainty that, had it not been for Covid and his utter ineptness at handling it, Trump would have won reelection. At least the Orange Julius Seize Her disease was brought under control.
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