We are all living through this in real-time. A few of us even know people who have died from COVID-19 [1]. For the first time in a long time, on a large scale, many people are experiencing the effects of normalcy bias, even if they don't it is called that particular term. [2] Good or bad, we are all seeing the results of having a global supply chain. For the first time in a long time, most of us know people who are unemployed for reasons that are beyond their control. We are seeing acutely the benefits of a social safety net. [3] For the first time in a very long time, with few exceptions, people are not experiencing FOMO as it relates to the innocent but probing "what are you doing this weekend?" or "what did you do this weekend?", as people simply cannot "go out on a Friday" like they did just a couple months ago. The whole casual Tinder hookup culture is undergoing a sea change in the temporary era of social distancing, as kissing is a known probable vector for virus transmission. Let alone, having a date in a restaurant is a vaguer memory every passing day.

The Internet, broadly speaking, is fueling a return to creativity not seen widely since the days of MySpace. Creativity almost always thrives under constraint. For example, Russian isolation art [4].

Finally, for those who are saying we'll forget about this in two years... (normalcy bias) what if there is ultimately no successful vaccine and just a set of treatments that are fairly to moderately successful once you are infected?

[1] > The CDC's Pandemic Flu Storybook provides readers with a look at the impact pandemic flu events have had on both survivors and the families and friends of non-survivors. These stories are not folklore, but personal recollections.

https://www.cdc.gov/publications/panflu/stories/survived.htm...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/business/europe-coronavir...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/world/europe/russia-Faceb...