I like my useless body-composition weight scale. It gives me numbers and plots with labels describing things I want to know. The numbers come from computations based on scientific studies. The numbers have a certainty to them even though I have no idea where this health story will end up. I am entertained watching the show of my own making.
This trend of upsetting the normal arrangements will continue. While this is happening there will be more shortages. Supply chains will dwindle due to government restrictions and due to the lack of labor. The supplies that are delivered will have inflated costs due to high demand or due to the need to pay for the higher labor costs. The ultimate result is high inflation.
It may be beneficial to reevaluate our approaches for treating contagious diseases especially those associated with epidemics. We have technologies we never had before with automation, communications technologies, and with miniaturization and mass production of highly reliable consumer appliances. We could plan for future epidemics around a near total at-home treatment path instead of following the historic practice of collecting patients into hospitals.
In a pandemic, there are primarily just a few conditions that need treatment, where pneumonia is probably the most common. So, part of preparation for a future pandemic should have focused more attention on preparing for pneumonia treatment instead of counting on processes to prevent the pandemic to spread in the first place. If we had better treatment for pneumonia and had better stores of equipment to manage the condition, we would have less to fear from pandemics.
Hypothesis Discovery 