For me we were already heading towards bad consequences as it was. The wealth gap was widening and widening. Young people stuck with loads of college debt--not getting the kinds of work to pay off their loans---putting well off into the future things like buying a home or getting married--having children. We were setting them up for a life of indentured servitude. So there's the potential to take an awful and castastrophic event and put ourselves on another path. One of the points that Naomi Klein made in her Shock Doctrine is that after a disaster there are usually numerous ideas and options lying around to be picked up on the road to whatever recovery takes place afterwards. It's obvious though to me with so many who are going to be out of work--unable to pay for things like rent that what is going to have to happen here is going to have to be very people-centric because letting wealthy entities take the lion's share as per usual is going to absolutely crash the economy and very likely that will lead to some kind of societal revolt--whatever form(s) that takes. Now I don't like a whole lot of politicians but even so I think more of them are realistic enough to see reality than not.
We're also use to certain ideas about society or about the economy that have been with us our entire lifetimes. That doesn't mean though there aren't other ways. To me there are all kinds of unexplored alternatives---sometimes they just need a chance. On our political I'm hearing things from people as diverse as Cuomo, Romney, Hawley that I never thought I'd ever hear before. Some of these people are already kind of brainstorming---nothing is stopping any of us from brainstorming either.
They way I see it, risk reward supply demand are going to be paramount, like they always have been.
To restore trust, thus lower risk and increase demand, We need health. We need the current sick people to get better. Then some sort of viable treatment and extensive testing both for the virus and for immunity. If immunity only last a short period of time, or if some do not develop enough antibodies to even give them temporary immunity, the whole idea of restarting stuff will come down to taking ones chances by going out into public.
If herd immunity ideas comes to be, people are going to want to know their chances of contracting the virus, their chances of getting very sick rather than it being mild or them being asymptomatic, and their chances of mortality should their contract it. None of that is know as of yet, it's going to take time, I don't see any silver bullet, instantaneous game changer. (I mean I know I could get hit by a bus, yet I'm pretty darn sure I could have seen the bus, I have had the flu before and know I have a ~99.8% estimated chance of surviving it, this is different)
I feel for those who want to restart the economy that should be their top priority. Take care of the current sick, do the best they can to keep others healthy. Give the medical community as many resources as they possible can. In the scale above put the onus on the bigger solutions which are plain just going to take time. While I see some in government agree to that to an extent, it looks like others are more thinking let's just go with herd immunity and hope for the best.
To play out a herd immunity scenario, those who have the means to stay out of public are going to wait for those who do not have that option to be basically test subjects. One group has a different risk/reward scale than the other group. The people who have the take the bigger risk are likely to be the poorer who need to get back to work asap just to feed themselves and their families.(likely those without great heath care) If that turns out well, not a large jump in infections, etc, others who have more means will start to take part. Those with the most means will be the last to take part.
If the herd immunity ideas go poorly everyone ends back up in a more restrictive lock-down. What does that do for public or consumer confidence? The lock down ideas will be countered by those who feel their liberty is being taken away. The ideological divide will just grow larger. (Which may be inevitable no matter what)
As far as the world changing in a positive way out of this, in some regards I am optimistic. Mostly I believe people can adapt to pretty much anything. People are a innovative, forward thinking creatures. My pessimism, that innovative thinking can be used in a variety of ways where some of those ways do nothing for the greater good.
