COVID 19 doesn’t happen

[Samof94]

How would a closer to normal 2020 look??? I am discussing the idea of it a little differently than usual. What if a crisis similar to SARS-1 happened and briefly disrupted part of Asia but killed rather few people and the West was mostly unaffected???

[brucejoel99]

Too early to say. Take - for example - 9/11: right now, we can say how impactful it was on America, the Middle East, & Central Asia, but had somebody had asked "how would a world without 9/11 look right now?" in April 2002, we wouldn't be able to say anything other than "there would be no war in Afghanistan," which was obviously nowhere near the only consequence of 9/11.

[BaldEagle1991]

How would a closer to normal 2020 look??? I am discussing the idea of it a little differently than usual. What if a crisis similar to SARS-1 happened and disrupted part of Asia but killed rather few people and the West was mostly unaffected???

We'd have the Olympics in Tokyo in the summer and that would've been badass.

Sucks Russia was banned though.

[SingingAnalyst]

Trump/Pence hold all their 2016 states except MI, NE-2, PA for a 269-269 tie, still losing the PV to Biden/Harris by 3.5%. The aftermath of that would make for an interesting timeline.

[Agonized-Statism]

We were already headed for a recession, albeit a much less severe one, due to the trade war with China and the Saudi-Russian oil price war. Economic disparities and racial inequalities still would have gotten attention, propagated during election season if nothing else. We'll never know the exact motivator of the suburban backlash against Trump this year, but if it was primarily about his COVID response, he might have won. Getting the virus he pretended didn't exist at times was the point of no return for his campaign. There might also have been a war in Iran right now without our governments' energies focused on dealing with this crisis.

For future alternate history, the long-term cause and effect would lead to a much different world than the one we're going to get.

[Cory]

[Samof94]

Trump/Pence hold all their 2016 states except MI, NE-2, PA for a 269-269 tie, still losing the PV to Biden/Harris by 3.5%. The aftermath of that would make for an interesting timeline.

Indeed. Think the current protests but 100 times worse.

[Lechasseur]

I think Trump would have still lost imo

[Wakie77]

You have a much much closer election.  The # of voters is reduced and we all know that tends to favor Republicans.  So there is a significant chance that Trump wins.  Fortunately God intervened and sent a plague to remove the orange demon.

[anthonyjg]

One major change might be BLM which I don’t think would have quite found its moment without a pandemic. Pent up anger and disproportionate harm done to black communities as a result of covid likely primed us for protest in a way that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.

As for the election, I’d say it plays out pretty much exactly the same. People looked to parties and leaders they trusted to find answers for the pandemic. I do not believe a sizable number of Americans actually changed their mind as a result of this virus.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Trump makes the election about the strong economy and wins with a map close to 2016.