"You often can’t tell the difference between a 'serious-but-lesser' and a world-historical event as it’s happening. Nonetheless, from where I sit, coronavirus falls into the former and not the latter category." #QotD

Check-in area at Frankfurt Airport on April 5, 2020, emptied by Coronavirus (Stefan Moechel/Shutterstock).

"My first observation is that even major things like coronavirus seldom change the course of history. While there are genuine 'world-historical' events—Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as a state religion, the fall of the Roman Empire, the collapse of China’s Song Dynasty, the 1347-51 Black Death, colonisation of the Americas, the Mughal conquest of India—they are few and far between. Instead, what serious but lesser happenings do is enormously amplify and accelerate trends that were already present. Of course, you often can’t tell the difference between a 'serious-but-lesser' and a world-historical event as it’s happening. Nonetheless, from where I sit, coronavirus falls into the former and not the latter category."
        ~ Helen Dale, from her post 'Life After the Plague'
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