The COVID-19 pandemic is the world war of our time, and it's the best of world wars

I decided to abandon my usual dyspeptic self for a moment, and write about this: 

What good can come out of a global pandemic?

Many gloomy things have been said and written about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But when we think of it, it's a great opportunity, despite the significant human and material damage it causes. The pandemic may become the Great War of our time, and that is not necessarily such a bad thing after all. It's not nearly as bad as actual wars are, but it may carry many of the benefits that past wars have had.

In history, world wars have given huge boosts to technological and social change. The carnage of war has been immense, and of course not all of the post-war change that came about has been for the good either – and many changes being good or bad is always also a matter of opinion. But if we don't think of the immediate destruction, we can say that the humankind leaped ahead as a result of these wars.

World War I 

Leap of technological development and advancing equality in the old class societies



The Great War of 1914-1918  killed many, many men in the wargoing countries, and diverted production to war materials. As another downside, it also for its part enabled the Spanish flu pandemic, although overall, this epidemic is not considered to be as big a factor as the war itself.

But later on, the war also enabled huge societal changes.

The Great War was a primary mover of change in many countries. Class societies started to collapse because the men who fought in the trenches, often of low social class, were there side by side with their leaders, who often were from upper echelons of society. Everyone noticed they were all needed, and when you're a man and a uniform carrying a weapon, all men are rather equal and meritocracy becomes more important than inherited position.

For example in Britain, the war kicked off the demise of the class society as it was known. Most of us of course know this from the perspectives of the upper classes. TV serials like Upstairs Downstairs, Brideshead Revisited and Downton Abbey have described this change to us.

The war also accelerated the efforts and credibility of the universal suffrage movement. Again, for example, UK got suffrage for all men in 1918 and all women in 1928. Women worked increasingly in production, and not just textile works but also munitions factories.

In Russia, the war kicked off a socialist revolution. This had great promise, although it was then kidnapped by the Bolsheviks, who set up a dictatorship. Even under this dictatorship, the backwards, reactionary and inefficient rule of the Tsars could be converted into considerable human development.

Likewise, the corrupt and backward Ottoman empire collapsed and gave way to the Young Turks. Similar changes happened as a result of the war in many nations, large and small.

Perhaps the worst part of aftermath of World War I was, in addition to the rise of Bolshevist dictatorship in Russia, that the peace treaty of Versailles crippled Germany. This directly contributed to the rise of Nazism and a second great war.

The first great war accelerated technical development. Automobiles, chemical industry, metallurgy– all these developed fast. Aviation kicked off.

But the greatest impact was the emancipation of classes: universal suffrage became the norm in countries. Working-class parties rose in many countries and paved way for social reform, improved public health care, schools, pension systems. In Finland, it lead to the liberation of tenant farmers through a land reform law that enabled them to purchase the land they tilled, at a reasonable price; this had a huge impact on later development, as 20 years later everyone felt we're in the same boat when facing an existential threat from the USSR. And the nation survived the next great war.

World War II

Another leap of technological development, withdrawal of colonialism and an economic re-start



The Great War of 1939-1945 (or 1937-1949 if we remember China) was a continuation of the first, at least in Europe. Repression of Germany in Versailles lead to revanchism, and the promises of populist economic policies of redistribution by national socialists could not be kept without a war which was also their ideological goal.

Simultaneously USSR could no longer benefit from fast growth it had been enjoying after leaving the stagnation of the incompetent Tsars. When Stalin dreamed of increased population growth and the 1937 census told him he was wrong, he got so furious that he sent to the camps his underlings who counted honestly.

Japan was between a rock and a hard place  trying to get hold of resources in the Pacific region, and felt it had to go to war to win them.

America and most of the Western world was in the grips of Great Depression in the 1930's.

The total carnage of total war started already in 1931-1937 in China, where the Japanese had similar expansionist needs as Germany had in Europe. And then the two moustached dictators agreed to split Europe to their spheres on influence to prepare for the confrontation.

So what happened during the war?

Huge technological progress. Aviation leapfrogged again, we got rocketry, jet engines, large capacity planes for transport. Penicillin was deployed to mass production. Bletchley Park and others gave us computers, anti-aircraft operations gave us radar, the Manhattan Project paved way for nuclear power. After the actual world war which ended in 1945, it continued as a Cold War which gave us man in space and a trip to the Moon.

The great social change after the second Great War was collapse of colonialism.  Massive numbers of people all over the world, particularly Asia and Africa, gained independence and self-determination. India became the largest democracy in the world. Some of that change was democratic, some was less so. Some countries have leaped forward greatly to become front-line deveoped nations, some have progressed much slower if at all, but still the post-war human development was very significant. Many people became masters of their own fate.

Marshall Aid and similar schemes developed Western Europe after the war. Germany had Wirtschaftswunder.

In many wargoing countries, there was also an impact to fertility after the war: the trust that people have in their futures was restored, and that showed up by building larger families, the boomer generation.

What will COVID-19 change?

Digital leap, rise of local resiliency and an economic re-start


There will be large-scale, extremely significant economic impacts by the coronavirus epidemic, particularly by the scaling back of trade and reduced movement of people, which is necessary to contain the epidemic. It will be devastating for many companies and entire countries.

But we won't be hit so much by many people being killed as from an actual war. Even if 1 or 2 % of people die of SARS-2, that is still ofl limited impact when compared to what happened in 2nd World War, because the dead will be mostly older people who are not economically active, and we will not have the huge material destruction of infrastructure, homes and public facilities like we had in the last great war. The loss of remaining life years by the pandemic will be smaller than the loss of many young men in wars.

And we will learn from this, and there will be several benefits. For instance, during this crisis we will be forced to learn to work remotely. We will soon know much better how to apply telecommunications and computer technology to work, to teach, to learn. This is digital transformation. We will perhaps learn to do things with somewhat less travelling in the long run, although I expect that much of the travelling we've done will resume when the virus crisis is over.

Another important change will be in attitudes. The last couple decades of globalisation have created much discontent in Western societies – some of it undeserved – and we can maybe reset that now.

The humankind has generally benefited from globalisation – absolute poverty has decreased throughout the world, particularly in poor countries; more children go to school than ever; more people have health care than ever; more children are vaccinated than ever. Hans Rosling's TED talk and similar performances show this in an inspiring way. In very many ways, this era of globalisation has been great. But it has had some excesses, and some social impacts that are a genuine reason for discontent.

There has been a kind of economic stagnation caused by outsourcing of manufacturing, particularly  to China. Now we've seen that such concentration of logistical chains is a danger. We need to have more manufacturing and other economic activities throughout the world to increase the resiliency of supply chains, and we need increased food security. Particularly we need to reduce the dependency in China who is a major potential source of pandemic diseases due to its treatment of wildlife trade and therefore a risk for everything where it is the sole supplier.

We will increase our preparedness to fight pandemics by preparing equipment, test sets and training people. And we will increase our local resiliency by ensuring that we are able to live, develop and thrive with more sustainable supply chains for industry, agriculture and other things.

The population development in the world has also been in an imbalance: Western countries have had even declining populations, whereas undeveloped countries still have had uncontrolled growth. This may now be balanced: 3rd world countries continue to develop and population growth will slow down as health care and education continue to improve, and Western countries may well expect a baby boom after the COVID-19 epidemic, much in the way there was a baby boom after Second World War.

The COVID-19 is the war of our time, but it'll be soon over, the destruction is going to be much smaller than from the actual world wars, and we'll recover.