Counting Casualties

Stepping away from the actual pandemic, because I'm tired of disputing with morons on things that are grade school simple, we wander over to the crystal ball for a bit to look at some potential and probable casualties rather more important than even the 70K+ people (and counting) that'll never be going anywhere but the cemetery from here on out.

Are these casualties guaranteed? No.
Are they likely? O Hell, yes.
Are they permanent? If not, how long will they last? GOK. God Only Knows.

The Oil Industry
People ignore the fact that Russia and OPEC were getting into a throat-slitting contest before the pandemic became news outside China, but that shindig, coupled with .Gov ringing the alarm over Kung Flu, gave Wall Street the go-ahead to take the most massive fiscal shit on itself in recorded history.

Last week, the price of oil was down to "If you'll take this crap off my hands, I'll pay YOU $19/bbl to unload it for me." Imagine Macy's giving $50 bills away for taking suits and dresses - marked down to "FREE" - off their store racks, and you've got the idea.

Fracking? Drilling? Fuggedabowdit.
Short-term, OPEC countries are going to starve, first for cash, and then quite possibly for real. This is when "Arab Spring" from a couple of years ago turns into a Long, Hot Summer Of Discontent.

American drilling platforms, oil fields, and general operations? Probably taking a months-to-years long shit on themselves too. We may never see things like they were last December again, for years, to decades, to ever.

Airlines

F**ked. Like 9/11 f**ked. This year at least. Some of them won't be back, ever.
Airlines run on razor-thin margins, and some won't survive the next shake-out.
Which takes out everyone from pilots to baggage manglers.
(But still not those fat, stupid crotch-groping perverts and luggage thieves at TSA, dammit!)

Bonus: Less demand for aviation fuel kicks the oil bidness in the crotch again.

The Auto Industry

We were already sitting on a months-long glut of cars, because the "booming" economy wasn't trickling down from banks and board rooms to where people buy new cars. With unemployment where it is now, defaults on auto loans to come, and metric fucktons of repo cars, demand for new cars will probably hit 1930 levels. I.e. nada. If Detroit announced there would be no 2021 models or model year, it wouldn't surprise me at this point. So auto workers, and ancillary parts makers, dealerships, auto finance, banking, etc.

Bonus: Yet another crotch shot to the oil industry.

Travel and Tourism

Deader than airlines. Hotels, restaurants, tourist destinations, cabbies, cooks, maids, etc.
Deals will be had, to be sure, but it's going to be awhile before anyone wants them, and a yuuuuuge chunk of people on the dole won't be taking trips anywhere, including the grocery store. And since it's either "newlywed, or nearly dead" that make up most travel/trips, I wouldn't expect the AARP/AMAC crowd to be lining up in droves to see when and whether this pandemic has gone out, anytime soon.

Vegas? Short it, in every way.

Which all impacts not just direct staff, but also sales of supplies, linens, and oh yeah, food.

Food Production and Distribution

People hoarded, so week to week purchases will drop while they eat that. A lot of people are unemployed, so what they do buy, they'll buy less of. We've already seen crops plowed under, to keep from bottoming out prices. Next, herds that cost more to feed than they'll bring at market will soon go the same way.

Which such wild swings, it's a short step from glut to shortages, especially come winter.

Entertainment

Disney Inc. probably won't re-open any parks in 2020, by all accounts. They're posting 90% Q2 losses (on top of the epic flop that was their craptastic StarBores additions, which lost them billion$ already), and isn't getting better, as they look to do without any summer park revenue either. Add Six Flags, and every other theme and amusement park to that list, as what gets re-opened, and the whims of both the government and the public change like the wind daily.
The movie business is about to get the worst summer in history, in all likelihood. Pisser not just for Tom Cruise and Top Gun 2, but for the entire multi-billion $$ industry, from fat-cat producers and overpaid actors, all the way down to the folks who wash the cars, take the tickets, sell the popcorn, and those who provide everything from midnight meals for production crews, to props, wardrobe, equipment, and a gajillion rentals of everything known to man.
Concerts? Who's likely going to attend COVIDfest 2020? Is it even going to be an option in most places? I'm thinking it's unlikely at best, for some time.

Education

Brick-and-mortar K-PhD died this year, even if they don't know it.
The secret's out: most school years could be knocked out in 3 months at home, for most K-12 kids. And unconstrained by waiting on the teacher to help the utter morons at the left edge of the IQ curve in every grade level, what kids can learn at home is fun, engaging, and interesting, when they're not being beaten over the head with Common Core stupidity, white guilt, privilege-shaming, tolerance for every perversion and every dubiously suspect fruit-loopy pile of rose fertilizer under the sun, except for orthodox Christianity and American cultural exceptionalism.
Not paying $50-$100K for degrees in underwater basket weaving and Victim Studies isn't going to hurt college students' feelings, when they realize they could do the whole four years in three, at home, in their PJs, with zero impacted classes, while holding down a paying job, and graduating with an actual marketable degree and no debt.

De-fund both public teachers unions, and liberal indoctrination gulags, in one swell foop?
Be still, my beating heart!

The only reason for 90% of colleges and universities by next year will be to pander to the alumni's sportsball fetishes. I'm spitballing here, but the brighter leagues will simply adopt them wholesale as minor-league feeder streams outright, put them on payroll, and end the charade.

The 10% of all schools who deliver educational bang for the buck, however, will have their pick of students from here on out.

Commercial Real Estate

Everyone on earth just got the memo that dragging people an hour's drive each way daily is silly and sooooo 19th century. When they realize how much they can streamline by cutting out buildings, 57-gender bathrooms, and 200 feet of regulatory oversight and compliance by leaving most employees the hell alone, and letting them crank out their work from home, most corporations from medium to huge will be dumping buildings like they were on fire and radioactive.

And when 2000 people a day don't all troop in and out and finger-bang the same elevator buttons and door handles, the plagues and pandemics of their children don't get shared around the office, cutting health care costs for the company too.

Win-win.

Bonus: Still another crotch kick, with both feet, to both the oil and automotive industries, and the travel industry.

And this is just for openers.

TL;DR?

As we warned you waaaaaaay back in Jan/Feb., multiple times, the deaths from a virus are relative small potatoes. The blowback from it, however, is going to shrink the economy, and put a lot of people who had jobs in December out on their ass, some of them for years to decades.

{We also told fucktards not to panic, but that the fucktards out there would miss that message, which is why they're fucktards. No really, we said exactly that:

"{Nota bene, random fucktards, no one, least of all this site, is ringing the panic bell. You'll ignore this obvious truth, but that's why you're fucktards.}"

If you're keeping score in your programs, that's still a 1.000 batting average.}

The engine of the economy just had a huge bubble of water pumped into the fuel line, and one of the pistons just sheared off. What happens after that?

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

And this is just the everyday stuff, inside the country.
Wait until this rumbles through 150 other countries' economies. ;)
For a lot of people, barring miracles, a butter-smooth Sully landing in the Hudson isn't in the cards.
It's "just the flu, bro?"
Because this is what happens every year?
Sh'yeah. As if.

愿你生活在有趣的时代

 

Follow-on: Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man has some personal ideas in a riff off this OP. Please go read.

And now Forbes Magazine and Bill Whittle want to pile in on this: