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Seriously. Many historical events were completely missed in the day. The list is long, but a few are worth noting for context.
- Enrichment
The common person started becoming richer in some parts of Europe by the early 18th century before industrialization. It wasn't just the rich landowners who made profits from colonization of other parts of the world. It was the common person who made much, much more in aggregate than those nobles who owned the land and slaves. It was an historical aberration never before seen written large across Northern Europe. The Peasants were getting richer. Hard to explain if it is even noticed.
Many today know the world got richer, but mistakenly believe in one or another cause for it. Most of the causes fail to explain the truly vast amounts of wealth that appeared seemingly from nowhere. Many others fail to explain why it didn't happen earlier or with other cultures. Only one of the explanations survives, but few like to believe it because it sounds too easy.
We liberated ourselves and granted dignity to each other. Somewhat. The more it was done, the richer the common person became. Nothing was perfect mind you. We are still at work on this project and there is plenty more to do.
The common person got immensely wealthy by the standards any peasant would have understood. Why measure this using peasant standards? Because the common person through history WAS a peasant. Are they today? No. Absolutely not. There aren't many peasants left on Earth. There are still people too poor to live comfortably in the culture in which they are embedded, but they are not the peasantry. Those people are members of the petite-bourgeosie. Real peasants still have dirt floors in their shelters and work at fixing that problem.
- Movable Typeface
More commonly known as printing, this technical innovation set fire to Europe, but not right away. Initially, it enabled faster printing for useful documents. Like Indulgences. Like Bibles. Like Sermons. Initially, it was limited by the cost of paper, but Demand begets Supply which overshoots and begets another generation of Demand. Did the initial adopters anticipate the Reformation? No. Not really. Even the Roman Church took a while to see the threat, but it moves slowly. That should surprise no one.
Did the people living in those early years anticipate what printing would do to the knowledge professions? Well... Gutenberg did to a point. We know that because he used a book fair for his pitch to investors. Did he understand the scope of the revolution to come, though? Doubtful. No one did.
Everything changed, though. Cheap printing enabled a revolution to occur. Anyone with the financial support could print what they knew to be true. Anyone. Obviously it has become cheaper by many orders of magnitude since then due to industrialization and digitization and networking, but these things carry on the initial trend that was missed at the time it started.
Missed? Really? Well. Some of them had their guesses, but they've proven to be mostly wrong or vast under-estimations of what happened. That shouldn't surprise us, though. We aren't very good at anticipating the effects of causes in highly non-linear systems. That's what we are. Highly non-linear by design. That's precisely what our markets do. Not just the monetized markets. All our markets.
- Epidemiology -> Germ Theory
It's difficult to describe just how badly the trends that emerged from our growing knowledge of biology got missed in the day. Even simple stuff. Well... stuff we think is simple today. Things like 'excrement in drinking water' kills people who drink it. Cholera is just one of the largely avoidable diseases that kills us in our ignorance and surrender to the 'fates'. Small Pox only spread between humans who came near enough to each other or the materials of others who were in a certain state of infection. Social distancing did wonders and we eventually began to understand that. We tried many other things first, though. Prayers. Magic. You name it. Surely it couldn't be so simple as to avoid each other. It was, though.
After learning some of the basic rules, THEN we figured out some of the magic that actually works. People who were exposed to cow pox survived small pox. Iodine killed whatever was in the water causing disease X, but maybe not disease Y. Ever use iodine when you are out camping and can't trust the water? Got something better than that now? Gee. One wonders why we made the effort to learn.
Some of the simple rules are still failing the traction test, though. Do you always wash your hands when leaving a public restroom? How about your private restroom? Do you cough into your elbow or mask up when you know you are contagious? No? These things are easy to do and cheap too. Some do it all. Some do it occasionally. Some refuse.
At least the doctors clean their hands before helping a young mother give birth to an infant. That former failure came to an end in much of the world and ended two tragically avoidable forms of death. Mothers die giving birth to infants. The infants die too. They have a better chance if they aren't given a dose of death by their own doctors, nurses, or midwives. This change has been SO successful that many now believe a young mother faces NO risk at birth. They are mistaken, but it is an astounding error given how many widowers litter our history books. Husbands locked in unhappy marriages were often freed to re-marry without resorting to murder or divorce. Fathers in happy marriages were similarly freed often losing both wife and child.
These improvements have been gradual, but like a tsunami they changed our social landscape. There would be no abortion debate in the US if maternal mortality was still high. Sure. Many would still oppose the activity, but they wouldn't have much support from non-zealots. Too many of us would have lost mothers, sisters, and wives. The debate would have no traction. We probably wouldn't imprison children either, let alone steal them from their parents for crossing our border illegally. Too many of us would know how the loss feels. It wasn't long ago that one in five children died before reaching their fifth birthday.
- Vaccines -> mRNA vaccines
Which brings me (finally) to the change for which I think 2020 will actually be remembered. Vaccines have been around a while. Early attempts at a small pox vaccine can be found in history textbooks on the American Revolutionary War. Salk's Polio vaccine and his release of it practically earned him a Sainthood. The impact they create is (generally) NOT missed by those in the day. Why draw attention to them here? Well...
The SARS-COV-2 vaccines currently being shipped are fundamentally different. Like moveable typeface, they enable us to do something we could have done another slower, expensive way, but in a faster, cheaper new way. Like germ theory ideas, they enable us to do useful things now instead of later after tripping across an epidemiological solution found because we tried everything including tossing in the kitchen sink.
These vaccines aren't built on dead virus samples. They aren't even 'discovered' if we are fair to the meaning of 'discovery'. It is more correct to say they are written. Sure. What we write in the mRNA sequences is found through discovery. For now. That's not what is shipping, though. Early mRNA methods produced product that would induce a profound inflammatory response in patients killing them quickly. Not so anymore. Why? Because we know how to write them in a way that avoids triggering our immune systems.
If your jaw isn't on the floor at this point, you either work in the industry OR you haven't read enough science fiction. Seriously. Writing instruction snippets our immune systems accept and act upon is such a huge deal even many science fiction authors thought it out of our reach. Some didn't, though. There are stories about this kind of capability. Some are truly scary. Some are deeply difficult to believe. Some are both because decent human beings with this kind of capability can DO things formerly reserved for The Gods Of Our Myths.
Unless you work in the industry, you probably don't realize what just happened. Humanity just picked up a magic #$%ing sword of its own making. What will we do with it? You probably can't imagine what is coming next. Your children might miss it too. Future generations won't, though. The world just changed.
Do you know what researchers had in mind for this sword before COVID-19 caused human markets to seize? No? Don't blame yourself. Unless you work in the industry, you probably wouldn't. Some of them were eyeing the influenza virus variants.
Again, if your jaw is not on the floor, you do not understand. SARS-COV-2 is pretty effective at killing old people and others who are compromised. It is astonishing how quickly researchers pivoted... unless you work in the industry. If you do, you know it's more like swapping movable typeface than staffing a Manhattan Project. It's faster with more flexible techniques. Don't think investors will fail to notice.
You know who the influenza virus variants are pretty effective at killing? Our children. We've partially forgotten this because we are pretty good at the epidemiology of influenza. We've even got mildly useful vaccines based on dead virus samples occasionally. If you can keep your kids alive long enough, influenza probably won't kill them. Unless... some new strain makes the leap from birds through hogs to the human population. That's where prior efforts have been most watchful. Farms where hogs and ducks are kept in close proximity. Large hog populations. Bird populations that live among and in close proximity to humans. What would the world look like, though, if we write mRNA snippets that attack entire influenza viral families? Can you imagine that? Probably not, but that future has fewer dead children.
Can we do it? Can we beat influenza in the human population?
This year... 2020... provides the existence proof of the technique. Yes. We can.
If those little viral agents had pants to piss in fear, they should be doing it right now.
What else is next? What other viral traumas do we suffer? What about bacterial ones?
The list is long and humanity just fashioned a weapon that will utterly change the war we wage on them.
Like with swords, we will probably cut ourselves a few times as we learn how to use it well.
Don't think for a moment that will will put it down, though.
One of the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse is about to loose his head. No. Not one of the original Horsemen. We unseated Famine during the Green Revolution. You didn't realize that? (See long list of trends missed by those who lived through the time.) No. I'm talking about about Famine's twin replacement. Disease.
Lop.
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