The pandemic will change our lives forever, we hear all around us. It will have economic consequences, because millions of people will be left without work. Social consequences, because we’ll replace direct human relations with substitutes in the form of video connections on communication software, remote work and online schools. And cultural consequences, if no more than the way foreign travel will become a rare and costly pleasure, and huge sport events and concerts will be dangerous attractions.
If we look back into history, we see that many epidemics have brought unexpected changes: short- and long-term, geostrategic, and in individual lives. Plagues have driven changes in philosophies of life, spread new trends (not always enlightened one) and toppled powers. The Lebanese-American scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb called these unpredictable shocks, which govern our world and our lives, “black swans”. A beautiful name for the coronavirus and other miseries!
End of empires
In the Bible, the appearance of a plague is usually treated as a divine punishment, or at least that’s how the
