The COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 CE — Global, Global

Today: The whole world

A novel coronavirus circled the planet in a matter of weeks, killing millions and triggering the largest peacetime shutdown of ordinary life in human history, as billions stayed home and governments spent unprecedented sums to keep economies alive. It was the ancient structural shock of Justinian's plague and the Black Death — compressed by modern travel into months instead of years. Demography once again overruled the best-laid plans, and here the recorded walk reaches you, where the next entry is still being written.

Worth knowing: Global lockdowns quieted the planet so profoundly that seismologists measured a worldwide drop in human-caused vibration through the ground — for a few strange months, the Earth itself was measurably more still.

Pattern: Pandemic — A pathogen spreads through a population and reshapes its demography, economy, and beliefs at once.

Entry 240 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.