We have all had 75 years now of relative peace where we didn't have to fight another big war like World War II. We did have the Cold War which was psychologically horrific that we all had to deal with but it didn't physically come into the U.S. and Neither did world War II really beyond Pearl Harbor.
So, our people are all incredibly spoiled since the Civil War and the Revolutionary war in this way.
It couldn't last forever. And we should be grateful no war or really big pandemic has hit us now since 1945.
The closest epidemic to the one now is polio in the early 1950s but not the numbers we are dealing with now potentially of deaths. 3000 died of polio in the 1950s and 60,000 children were infected and some paralyzed from polio. My best friend from Junior High through High School had to wear leg braces from polio up to age 6 or 7 years of age even though he set a 25 year record for the rope climb in Junior High that no one could break for 25 years because he did the rope climb and didn't use his legs at all unlike anyone else I have ever seen to a rope climb. He sat on the floor to start and when the starting bell rang he just went right up with his legs out at a right angle not touching the rope. Only his hands touched the rope. We climbed many mountains together and raced cars and motorcycles and dune buggies across the deserts of California.
My parents generation was "The Greatest Generation" and we have been the Luckiest Generation up until now.
And now the piper is being paid by everyone on earth. And I'm afraid this is going to be much worse for other countries than it will be for the U.S. for a variety of reasons too.
So, watching all this the next 5 years on earth will be pretty horrific and will change us all a lot.
The U.S. likely will be done pretty much with all of this within 2 years of people dying. At that point we should have a vaccine and be able to stop the deaths here. But, it will be much worse in foreign countries without a good health care system from Mexico South and in Africa likely it will be the worst. But, I worry also about India because I was there in 1985 and understand the types of problems people have there somewhat. So, India might be a problem too.
The biggest problem I foresee is too many dead bodies in Africa, South America and India which could create epidemics of Cholera and Bubonic Plague and Ebola which could be much worse than Coronavirus that we are presently dealing with. They won't be able to refrigerate the bodies in many places and if they don't just bury them with bulldozers and back hoes, diseases like I mentioned above will be rampant there.
So, coronavirus isn't the worst that could happen once governments break down. I'm worried 1/2 of the governments on earth are going to fail completely because of this so the toll will get pretty bad.
The problem is a cascading set of problems in many countries. The U.S. will find a way to survive all this but the rest of the world might not. We have enough resources and educated and disciplined people to survive this but many countries do not. And we will be so busy trying to take care of our people that we might not be able to help others the way we would want to.
The problems the world faces with coronavirus are much worse than what happened in World War II but very different in many respects. The worst problem for the U.S. likely long term will be national PTSD from all of this and trying to manage paranoia from going through all this.
Children especially will need counseling and adults too to manage losing so many of their loved ones all at once like this.
So, we will have a nation of "Walking Wounded" likely after this for about 10 years or more that we all will have to deal with.
God Help us all!
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