The following are my thoughts taken from a memo to family office investors I sent out today regarding the pandemic.
These are unprecedented times in modern history. Not since World War II has there been such a large disruption in daily lives across the world at such a quick pace.
The pandemic we've entered is a classic Black Swan — an unpredicted event that has extreme consequences. Of course, Black Swan events are relative. A surprise to you or I may have been wholly anticipated by others. And in this case, it very much was.
To epidemiologists and people who had seriously thought it through, a global pandemic quickly sweeping humanity was an inevitability. It was a matter of when, not if. In 2018 Bill Gates gave a short TED Talk about the dangers of a global flu-like pandemic and the measures we could take to help prevent or reduce it. As we’re now aware, the advice was unheeded.
The human lives lost from the virus will be a tragedy of epic proportions. The current and upcoming economic malaise may be nearly as bad — particularly affecting those without the means to ride it out. Recent wide-ranging government stimulus and intervention can soften the blow, but ultimately the only solution is getting rid of the virus.
This is another reminder that we live on the thin veneer of civilization — modern society is very fragile if we're not constantly vigilant about it.
We will get through this, as humanity has always done in the past. When the entire world has a common enemy, people get creative. Everyone should expect the world to look different after. Especially in areas like healthcare, biotech, and government.
These differences will all be for the better. Humanity is always searching for higher peaks of “fitness”, and on the rough landscape of possibilities sometimes you have to go down to eventually go up. Life getting worse before it gets better has always been a common theme. From the shift to agricultural societies, to world wars, to global pandemics.
We just need to work together to get through it first.