The chips shortage has been difficult, but it's also been little more than an inconvenience when you look at it in terms of goods being available to consumers or whatever.
I fell into the other poster's trap, talking about something emotionally charged that isn't really responsive to what I said initially.
Sad whomp whomp horn: the economy is going to be negatively affected by covid disability and death on an ongoing basis and a new pandemic will still cause so much fear the economy will shut down.
I do agree on Covid disability. Early on we saw some pretty dire predictions, but since then it's mostly been an exercise in muddying the waters. Lots of wheel-spinning about what constitutes long Covid when they should have simply been collecting data on the various symptoms. Better to not see the problem than have to deal with it.
Look at how we were handling AIDS before we discovered it was HIV destroying the immune system. Long Covid is still at that stage--we are seeing a slew of highly varied effects rather than the mechanism.
And a lot of people thinking it was an overreaction proves nothing. People don't get a vote on reality.