After March, and two earlier flus

The essay is written from inside the first shock of COVID-19, not from a later official tally. After March, the writer says, the virus spread worldwide, and its effect on the world economy and on social and cultural life was of a size not seen before. Even past epidemics of a similar kind, the page says, had a course so uncertain that an unpredictable blow to the world economy was already to be expected.

The Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu of 1968 are the cases used. An international infection of that kind, as the essay reads them, could run, from beginning to end, sporadically and locally, for a year or even two. With stronger global access, faster information, and a more urban life, the writer judges that the shock to the world economy now travels faster than it did then. Those comparisons, and that “after March,” are left in the essay’s window, not recast as 2026 official totals.

A holding back of going out, and a market that shrank

Each country’s own spread, and the measures taken to hold it back — a holding back of going out, among them — struck supply and demand, the writer says, and told on the real economy as a whole. The exchange of people shrank; the scale of markets shrank; and a shortage of hands appeared at the same time as the economy tightened.

Face-to-face work grew harder, and social distancing spread. “Untact” habits appeared, and so did new firms built on working from home. The description is of a first period, not of a later official series for output or employment.

A mask that came to feel ordinary, and a caution that may turn inward

A penalty for not wearing a mask, the writer says, came to feel like the ordinary form of a rule, and no one found that strange. The distance that had come in from a social gap seemed to settle into daily life. If, earlier, the page had spoken of what a group can give, it now turns to a different risk: that a person’s bent may leave the sense of a society, a group, or a life together, and turn only toward the individual, in an antisocial attitude.

The same behaviour can still be read, more kindly, as care, as a positive wish to be careful. The fear is that, if the habit hardens and becomes extreme, a self-centred antisociality may stand out. Individualism, the writer adds, has its own strengths, as a group has its strengths. An antisocial habit, though, may later weigh on decision-making and on the direction of a society, and so is a phenomenon to watch with care. A sociometric way of measuring whether feeling and relation among members are exchanged, or are not, is named in passing. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Korean essay on the COVID-19 economic shock and a feared self-centred antisociality, written from inside the first period after the virus spread worldwide in March.
2. Asian flu (1957) and Hong Kong flu (1968), as the page uses those pandemics for a course of one to two years.
3. Social distancing, “untact” habits, work from home, and a mask rule that came to feel ordinary, as the essay describes that first period.
4. Figures and timings are left in the essay’s window, not recast as 2026 official totals.

Last updated: 14 November 2026