What We’re Reading
A study of the 2003 SARS epidemic — localized though it was — found that “quarantined persons … exhibited a high prevalence of psychological distress,” with PTSD observed in almost 30 percent of cases. The longer someone was isolated, the greater their chance of developing PTSD grew.
Part of the founding legend of Dropbox is that Drew Houston told people what he wanted to do, and everyone said ‘there are hundreds of these already’ and he replied ‘yes, but which one do you use?’ That’s what Zoom did - video calls are nothing new, but Zoom solved a lot of the small pieces of friction that made it fiddly to get into a call.
Here’s the thing: You go back to the Spanish flu, you go back to all these things that were as devastating as this is, you go back and look at history where things were much more impactful from a mortality point of view, and you study it. And people went back sooner than you [expected] to their prior patterns, once they felt that they were in a healthy space.
Not that it’s the same by any means, but I remember 9/11. I lived through it. I was running another hotel company, and I remember sitting around talking with our board: “Nobody’s ever gonna get on a plane again. Why would they get on a plane?” Within a year, they did.
Edge:
An unprecedented expansion of federal aid has prevented the rise in poverty that experts predicted this year when the coronavirus sent unemployment to the highest level since the Great Depression, two new studies suggest. The assistance could even cause official measures of poverty to fall.
Have a good weekend, stay safe.