What good is going to come from this?

[TheMonk]

Assuming this goes for a little while, what good is going to come from this?

[idunnosomename]

Wh smith going bust

[ajsmith2]

I do wonder if it will bring the curtain down on the extremely politically polarized culture wars era that defined the 2010s. Not that I'm saying we will all realise we are one human race and walk off into the sunset together, but the (I'm gonna say it) unprecedented global all pervasiveness of this issue, and the fact that it's nature defies easy and certainly widely convincing politicization will surely serve to put things in perspective to an extent.

[ollyboro]

Bit less pollution. Sports Direct shunned.

[alan nagsworth]

Ungrateful bloody millennials in their autumn years actually having something to reminisce on that was of some small inconvenience to them.

[BlodwynPig]

Lone kid in school being taunted "COVID CHRIS, COVID CHRIS"

He will grow up to be a mass murderer unlike any other

[ajsmith2]

Ungrateful bloody millennials in their autumn years actually having something to reminisce on that was of some small inconvenience to them.

Yeah, it might narrow the boomer/millennial generation gap too. Now we all have our own shared Blitz experience to look back on, whereas before the boomers lorded the one they inherited from their own parents memories over the mills.

[Zetetic]

it's nature defies easy and certainly widely convincing politicization

I'm sure this foreign virus whose spread has been facilitated by relatively open borders and international economic interdependency will be very difficult to fit into existing prevailing narratives.

[Zetetic]

Remember how the Yugoslavian economic crises of the late '80s-1990 brought everyone together?

[Sin Agog]

Really can't see how anyone could manoeuvre a successful dismantling of the NHS now.  I mean, thar be cunts out there, but good luck finding enough web to spin that feat.

[Butchers Blind]

None.  People will forget and go back to being absolute cunts again.

[Danger Man]

I bet people thought in 1919 "Never again" not realising that 20 years later it was going to be even worse.

Mr Happy, that's me.

[Blue Jam]

Yeah, it might narrow the boomer/millennial generation gap too. Now we all have our own shared Blitz experience to look back on, whereas before the boomers lorded the one they inherited from their own parents memories over the mills.

They had rationing for beef dripping and silk stockings, we had a major shortage of bog roll. We win.

[Cardenio I]

Positive changes in working habits as managers see that working from home and with a greater degree of autonomy people can still get shit done. A massive, postwar style state that won't easily be rolled back. Popularisation of UBI as an idea. None of the above.

[Head Gardener]

hopefully there will be plenty of new music to come that isn't full of Corona references, I'd also like to think Kate Bush is cracking on with stuff

[idunnosomename]

I do wonder if it will bring the curtain down on the extremely politically polarized culture wars era that defined the 2010s. Not that I'm saying we will all realise we are one human race and walk off into the sunset together, but the (I'm gonna say it) unprecedented global all pervasiveness of this issue, and the fact that it's nature defies easy and certainly widely convincing politicization will surely serve to put things in perspective to an extent.

now it's time to hate china! get on with it, my pretties. oh and you, allison

https://twitter.com/allisonpearson/status/1242380209887883265

[ajsmith2]

I'm sure this foreign virus whose spread has been facilitated by relatively open borders and international economic interdependency will be very difficult to fit into existing prevailing narratives.

I'm very aware of those narratives being pushed by the usual old suspects, but I more meant (and I admit I could have made more effort to get this point across) that the all pervasiveness and hugeness of this crisis makes such partisan agenda pushing seem smaller and sillier. The immediate issue and dealing with it trumps the luxury of spectator sport finger pointing. I'm not saying that those reactions won't happen regular as clockwork, just that their effectiveness could be severely psychologically blunted in the wake of how global and (again, sorry) unprescedented this is.  I could well be being being incredibly naive and over hopeful I admit. I can also easily see the argument for the opposite happening and things ramping up even more. We will see.

[Zetetic]

Really can't see how anyone could manoeuvre a successful dismantling of the NHS now.

We haven't seen how badly it's going to fail yet.

[Captain Crunch]

Bumper summer for divorce lawyers and estate agents. 

[Twit 2]

None.  People will forget and go back to being absolute cunts again.

It's this every time. Cunts gonna cunt. Look at history.

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

[alan nagsworth]

None.  People will forget and go back to being absolute cunts again.

People have not yet stopped being cunts and it doesn't look likely to change in spite of all this. There's a mind-eating parasite of individual entitlement controlling vast swathes of the population that completely clouds any sense of empathy or communion. The message is "we've all got to come together to fight this thing" but no two fuckers from separate households are doing that. That's MY fucking trolley full of semi-skimmed milk and you can FUCK OFF if you think you're having a single drop of it.

[holyzombiejesus]

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

That's an awful lot to take from this...

[Twit 2]

Walter had form with that. I read the whole Arcades Project and there wasn't a single mention of Space Invaders. He needed to lighten up.

[buttgammon]

True, but there is the Bodger and Badger essay he wrote off the back of One Way Street.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I do wonder if it will bring the curtain down on the extremely politically polarized culture wars era that defined the 2010s.

I was thinking that arguing over Star Wars etc. seems even more stupid than it did before. And it was very fucking stupid to begin with.

[Blinder Data]

The average British voter to realise how punitive our benefits system is and that people should be guaranteed the majority of their income if they are out of work, as is the case in many other European countries

This article is titled 'How is £94 a week going to pay anyone's bills?', like they've only just realised it's frigging impossible: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52005581

Also, maybe just maybe a stonking Labour majority will follow this prolonged period of hardship and collective endeavour? It worked after WWII.

[massive bereavement]

I'm looking forward to the Adam Curtis documentary film. Every time I go to the shops and see somebody carrying toilet rolls my vision distorts into a slightly damaged videotape effect and I get Brian Eno's "In Dark Trees" in my head.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

It'll either go to one extreme or the other.

a) Governments put more money into health services.
People vote for parties who will put more money into health services, boost the social safety net, and strengthen workers' rights.
Companies facilitate remote working for disabled folks, caregivers and single parents in their employ.
Governments put in safety nets for small businesses in the event of something like this happening again.
Having seen its effect on emissions of climate changing gasses, governments and companies facilitate remote working for as many folks as possible.

OR

b) Governments privatise health services because that'll solve everything
Companies and employers' groups lobby to roll back legislation on sick pay and employee protections
Laws are passed to ensure big corporations get nice fat bailouts if this happens again and fuck the common worker
Pharmaceutical companies and medtech companies charge megabux for any vaccine/antivirals/ventilators/other equipment in slavering anticipation of this happening again
The usual suspects blame immigrants and open borders and the EU even though it was spread to other countries by citizens of those countries returning from abroad.

[Brundle-Fly]

A death metal group in Rugby will finally agree on a band name.

[MiddleRabbit]

It's an odd one.  On one hand, following the world wars, a more equal sort of society evolved - the NHS and all that, up to the sudden shift of 1979 with Thatcherism and the Ayotollah Khomeni both rising at more or less the same time and all the shit that followed that, up to about now. 

On the other hand, it's tempting to accept the broad brush strokes of a narrative that suggested some kind of 'everyone pulling together' during and after the wars when the reality was that there were plenty of looters and some cunts doing nicely through the black market.

Both of which are oversimplistic viewpoints.

I suspect, as others have suggested, that people will have very short memories.  After WWI, the massively decreased population was a daily reminder of what had gone on.  After WWII, the bomb sites had the same effect.

Following this pandemic, which doesn't look like having such a heavy death rate and, consequently, fewer lasting signs that it ever happened, I suspect that this will seem a bit like a fever dream - one which seemed both surreal and terribly lifelike at the same time.  People will talk of nothing else for a while and gradually other things will take precedence in the collective imagination.

I don't know how relevant this is, but I was at university when James Bulger was murdered and here was a sudden, immediate impact all over the place.  I was at York, so not anywhere near Liverpool, and what happened was that, immediately, the way people dealt with toddlers in town changed overnight.  The day before, as had been the case for years, toddlers ran around shops, wandering off.  The day after, mothers clung to their young children's hands for dear life.

For about a fortnight.  Then, gradually, it all went back to the way it had been before. 

I became a bit obsessed with it.  I possibly went on about it a bit much to my friends.  You know, "Do you remember the week after the James Bulger thing?  How mothers clung to their kids and then they didn't anymore?"  Probably people didn't want to think about the whole horrible incident, I can dig it, but the sudden shift in behaviour that didn't last even a month has always remained with me.

And, I suppose, that's what I expect will happen again.  People'll come out of this and pat each other on the back for being part of the human race, but only for about a week.  Then the first NHS worker will be assaulted by some arsehole, they'll have the book thrown at them - "After all they did for us!" And then it won't be news anymore, just like two women getting killed by their partners every week isn't news.

TL:DR - don't get your hopes up.

Ps: unless, of course, this will be millennials'' 'OK Millennial' moment for their kids and grandchildren - 'We had to stay in our houses and fight over toilet roll in shops for X months, you don't know you're born' moment.  In which case, karma, I guess.