I was trying to be a bit dramatic there...

Sure, it affects everything and given the complex interconnections and dependencies within production chains / networks, the cause-and-effect relationships are hard to understand and cause for concern. But given how complex and decentralized things are, I am still amazed we haven't seen worse effects (yet). I doubt that spare capacity in logistics alone would make a huge difference, because you'd also need spare parts, materials and manufacturing capacity, all of which are part of the same network.

First one thing, and then the next.

The spiral is in its early innings right now. Hold on tight!

With shipping containers being sent back to Asia empty rather than taking an extra leg to mid-America to fill up on US farm products to sell in Asia, is the price of soybeans and corn in Asia going to spike soon?

Do you really ship this stuff in containers rather than by bulk carrier ?

Farmers are smarter than you give them credit for.

They check real-time shipping costs and choose the cheaper option. It takes a few dollars worth of cardboard to turn a shipping container into a suitable container for corn or soybean shipping (really!).

Interesting! Still packing/unpacking could take longer I guess, in comparison to a modern bulk terminal, right ?

To be fair, once a century refers to average, it is by no means a guarantee that it will be a century before the next crisis.

To be even more fair, there's absolutely no reason to think these types of events are independent; there's good reason to believe they're positively correlated. This means once one happens the chances of it happening again soon are greater than before it happened. (But if you're lucky and it doesn't happen again the chances decrease further, giving you an average of 100 years between them again.)

> This means once one happens the chances of it happening again soon are greater than before it happened.

or more likely, it happens, but because of prior experience, the event is no longer as calamitous as the first time.

Looking at the GFC in 2008, the monetary policy back then was too tight (hindsight 20/20 and all that of course), causing the recession to be extended longer than it would've.

This covid disaster would've caused a similar problem, imho, if the Feds did not loosen up like never before. It "solved" that same problem the GFC produced. Had the GFC not occured, the pandemic would cause a double wammy - a medical problem, and also a monetary problem.

I can believe a pandemic might cause a global economic catastrophe on par with the Great Depression or the Great Recession, but I my imagination isn’t giving me any ideas how the latter might cause the former?

... poverty causes a rise in consumption of bush meat, like bats in Wuhan[1] or primates in central Africa[2]?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigations_into_the_origin...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS

By the economic catastrophe causing us to elect a president who dismantled a group that worked to monitor and respond to global health issues to prevent them from becoming a pandemic. I think it's hard to say if that group could have prevented Covid-19. Nor am I necessarily saying that the economic crises of 2008 caused us to elect Trump. But I think you could possibly find a path from one one to the other.