Re:Sweatpants Forever: How the Fashion Industry Collapsed
by xg15 on Sunday August 09, 2020 @07:56PM
(#24103987)
I agree that the pandemic was not a "black swan" - there were enough warnings that it's occurrence was more a "when" than an "if" question.
I wonder though if the events in the second half of march could be considered a black swan. Starting from mid-march, we saw first Europe, then a significant part of the world shut down most travel, large parts of its economy and almost all of its public life.
I remember the shift in the overton window to be particularly salient (from my pov in Germany):
Before March 15, the pandemic was one news story among many, even if a particularly worrying one. There were spirited public debates about whether travelers should go through temperature checks at airports and whether or not a city should take the unprecedenced step to chancel one particular trade fair. Some experts were proposing to close schools for a week or two and to conduct soccer games without audience - but those ideas seemed mostly academic and without any hope of becoming real policy.
Fast forward one week later and all trade fairs are canceled, as are any other kind of mass event; schools are closed indefinitely, borders are closed, global air travel comes to a full stop and the discussion of the day is whether or not to expect a nationwide, permanent curfew in the coming days.
The measures were clearly justified, but I have my doubts if anyone could have expected that countries actually pull through with this extreme kind of reaction.
I wonder though if the events in the second half of march could be considered a black swan. Starting from mid-march, we saw first Europe, then a significant part of the world shut down most travel, large parts of its economy and almost all of its public life.
I remember the shift in the overton window to be particularly salient (from my pov in Germany):
Before March 15, the pandemic was one news story among many, even if a particularly worrying one. There were spirited public debates about whether travelers should go through temperature checks at airports and whether or not a city should take the unprecedenced step to chancel one particular trade fair. Some experts were proposing to close schools for a week or two and to conduct soccer games without audience - but those ideas seemed mostly academic and without any hope of becoming real policy.
Fast forward one week later and all trade fairs are canceled, as are any other kind of mass event; schools are closed indefinitely, borders are closed, global air travel comes to a full stop and the discussion of the day is whether or not to expect a nationwide, permanent curfew in the coming days.
The measures were clearly justified, but I have my doubts if anyone could have expected that countries actually pull through with this extreme kind of reaction.