I often wonder what would things have been/be like if Covid had been just a little bit different/worse. It's easy to imagine how very tiny changes would have altered history in major if unknowable ways. What if a few more famous/powerful people died in the first wave? What if it was just a little bit more contagious, with a slightly higher mortality rate? What if, and this is probably the big one, children had similar symptomatic infection/fatality rates as adults instead of the apparent low rates they have?
Not wishing for any of those things, and only the first could have plausibly led to a better overall outcome (in the same way that people take the economy much more seriously when rich people money - STONKS - is at risk), but even little differences would have made the last several months very very different.
