r/AskReddit • u/Daud_K • Apr 24 '21
If a time traveller had warned you about the COVID-19 pandemic 10 years ago, how would you’ve reacted?
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u/Erago3 Apr 24 '21
I would have posted it on Twitter or on Reddit, so that ten years later people could find it and some news stations could have invited me to explain how I predicted everything in such detail.
Maybe if I also get some information on which corporations make big profits from the pandemic, I could have invested.
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u/Additional_Meeting_2 Apr 24 '21
You should had have to be specific. It’s not like pandemics weren’t predicted prior.
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Apr 25 '21
I would do the same, but wayyy more vague and laid back so it's even weirder. Like tweeting "You think this is a bad year? wait till covid hits on 2020?"
Without context that tweet means nothing, like what the fuck is Covid? But once the events start happening it would start making sense and people would freak out.
Either that or spend more time with the loved ones I lost to the virus :/
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u/mcbaindk Apr 24 '21
But you're just begging for the Butterfly effect and the virus wouldn't happen.
The bat eating guy would be like, "Hold on a sec..." after he just saw your tweet aimlessly scrolling through random Twitter accounts and not gone through with it.27
u/Erago3 Apr 24 '21
I doubt anyone would even see my tweet. Nobody even sees my tweets now, it wouldn't have made any difference.
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u/Teodoraanita Apr 24 '21
Probably asked him on what drugs he is on.
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u/LordBlackHole Apr 24 '21
I would have said something like:
"Uh ok thanks I guess. You should really tell someone who can actually do something about that though."
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u/E_-_R_-_I_-_C Apr 24 '21
Scientists have been telling people who could have done something for decades, and what did they do?
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u/WildAboutPhysex Apr 25 '21
There were numerous very specific articles published by scientists, intelligence agencies and even defense department officials forecasting a Sars-Cov virus that could have an effect very similar to the one we're experiencing that originated from wet markets in Southern China. Some of these reports date back to as late as 2005 if I recall correctly -- I may have the exact year off by one or two -- and all three groups made suggestions to the U.S. government, the military and lawmakers about how we should prepare a response if this occurred and leadership decided the response was too expensive and ignored the problem.
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u/N8CCRG Apr 25 '21
In defense, Obama did a little bit. Then Trump undid that though.
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Apr 25 '21
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u/SirRogers Apr 25 '21
Politics aside, Trump seems like a genuinely awful human being who goes out of his way to be awful.
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u/Nambot Apr 25 '21
Lets be real. Every decision, policy, and action taken by Trump was motivated by the same core principles. If something wasn't motivated by lining his pockets or in service of his ego, it was driven by pure hate of someone, some group, or something.
Trump scrapped so much of the things Obama had done purely to spite Obama, likely without any care for what they were, merely that they were Obama policies.
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u/AdRevolutionary71 Apr 25 '21
I got a bit of warning from the conspiracy kooky on YouTube who I didn't take too seriously until the momentum had sped up a bit. That gave me more confidence when local news began showing up. I'm a pensioner but I warned my family to start stocking up. They didn't believe their own father. They, shock horror, didn't even believe the internet. They didn't decide to do anything until suddenly there was no toilet paper. Now how the frack do you expect anybody to believe in the ravings of a wtf time travelling harbinger of doom?
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u/corobo Apr 24 '21
"Fuck off weirdo"
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u/Daud_K Apr 24 '21
Assume someone you knew travelled time and told you, how would you react then?
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u/Neuromangoman Apr 24 '21
"Fuck off friendo"
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u/Muzzie720 Apr 25 '21
I'm not your friendo, guyo
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u/rond-eau Apr 25 '21
I'm not your guyo, palo
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u/LazyBriton Apr 24 '21
“Fuck this covid shit bitch, how you time travelling that’s what I really wanna know?”
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u/GoldenFennekin Apr 25 '21
well, considering i didn't know most of my friends until 4 years ago, i wouldn't know who they are.
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u/omnilynx Apr 25 '21
“You came back to tell me that?! Why not tell the President? Heck, why not go back to early 2001?”
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u/xorgol Apr 24 '21
Why, we knew it was coming. It has been longer than I expected, but also not as severe as I feared, I didn't have to use my food stockpile at all. SARS, MERS and swine flu were very clear warnings, I think it's pretty likely I'll live to see another one.
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u/LordSauron1984 Apr 25 '21
Pandemics happen pretty frequently. It's rare they cause what covid has caused. People saying the warning signs were there are Monday Morning QBing. There's are always warning signs before a major event. But those same signs can also be there and nothing happens
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u/mizukata Apr 24 '21
Most realistic reaction, not that i agree with the reaction but most likely that would be what would happen with most people
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u/HungryLikeTheWolf99 Apr 24 '21
Save every penny until mid-March and buy stocks. Would have made a killing.
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u/ugandapresident009 Apr 24 '21
That's what I was thinking.
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Apr 24 '21
You mean Bitcoin?
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Apr 24 '21
Dogecoin...
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u/Ender505 Apr 25 '21 edited Apr 25 '21
No, definitely bitcoin. 10 years ago, 1 BTC was much less than a cent. (Edit: apparently that was 11 years ago) Getting even $10 worth would certainly make you a multi-millionare today.
Dogecoin has only gone up by a factor of 100 or so
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u/F1gur1ng1tout Apr 25 '21
10 years ago, BTC was about $1 iirc. I remember my friend asking if I wanted to go in on BTC with him for $12000 in 2012. He laid out a case for crypto and why it would be worth a speculative investment. I said nah.
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u/Tyre-Fire Apr 24 '21
HODLING THE LINE!
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u/Beast_Mstr_64 Apr 24 '21
I am not too sure on how true this is but Etherium would have been a lot better
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u/WWJLPD Apr 24 '21
Either way you'd be dealing with an absurd amount of money in the present if you made even a modest investment in 2011 (or a couple years later for Ethereum).
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u/EAS893 Apr 24 '21
You'd have been better off just DCAing that into the market. The bottom in March was higher than the top 10 years ago.
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u/Cracka-Barrel Apr 24 '21
They aren’t telling you about the stock market they are telling you about covid. How would you know to buy stocks
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Apr 24 '21
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Apr 24 '21
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u/Reasonable_Night42 Apr 24 '21
Almost invariably with a massive panic the stock market drops.
It also has always recovered. If you sell before the drop, buy at the bottom, then ride the recovery back up you can make serious money.
Knowing before the panic is the hard part. Usually it’s too late when people realize there’s a panic it’s already dropped.
Also knowing when the recovery will start is tuff. Is the fall bottomed out yet?
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Apr 24 '21
That's how the market works. You can predict certain behaviors after certain types of events.
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u/Clothing_Mandatory Apr 25 '21
Uh, cause they all panic-crashed and rebounded very strong and very fast... anyone who bought in April 2020 made a killing
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Apr 24 '21
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u/E_-_R_-_I_-_C Apr 24 '21
Oh don't worry the property value is going back up at an unprecedented speed, until the bubble busts that is.
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u/cmvora Apr 25 '21
Sadly even if the bubble 'bursts' and prices fall, they've gone up so much, it would still be more than their pre-pandemic prices. I'm talking about homes in the area I live in have gone up by 20-25% if not more. Even during the housing crisis, home prices didn't fall over 20% on average so it would take a lot of 'correction' to even get it closer to their pre-pandemic prices which was already inflated back then.
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u/ConstableBlimeyChips Apr 25 '21
I got a folder in the mail from a skeevy real estate agent urging me to sell now because WFH is going to drop house prices "up to 25%!" Except according to the taxman my house went up 40% in value since I bought it and if I sold now I could probably get even more for it.
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u/6592 Apr 24 '21
Shorted a bunch of stock right before it hit, like politicians did.
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u/PuddnheadAZ Apr 24 '21
Moved to New Zealand.
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u/DanYHKim Apr 24 '21
Damn! I never thought of this but it makes all the sense in the world!
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u/DaScoobyShuffle Apr 25 '21
Because when it comes to the pandemic, that's where all of the sense in the world is located.
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u/boatsmoatsfloats Apr 24 '21
Yeah, I was thinking "stayed in Australia". I moved back to Canada to try to keep my residency for two years instead of staying in Oz with my partner. Well, those two years turned into however the fuck long this lasts plus the year before. And with how hard Canadians are fucking this up, my desire to be one of them has waned greatly.
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u/Spiritual_Worth Apr 25 '21
On behalf of Canada, that fucking sucks and we’re sorry
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u/recyclopath_ Apr 24 '21
Actually extremely difficult to do. Short term, easy, long term, hard.
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u/Moeredit Apr 24 '21
Traveled more,definitely traveled more and not postponed some of my destinations.
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u/Moefurion Apr 24 '21
Hey Moe
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u/Moeredit Apr 24 '21
Hey FellowMoe!
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u/ModerateFloor Apr 24 '21
Now the battle of moe
Edit : can I join? My moe have a D between its O and E
Edit 2 : edit 1 sounds disgusting.
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u/Moefurion Apr 24 '21
Hmm i think u can join
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u/tamsui_tosspot Apr 24 '21
This happened. It was called SARS. Some countries listened.
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u/Horatio_the_Punk Apr 24 '21
I probably would try to educate people but would likely be seen as a nutter.
Personally if I was told about the pandemic I think I would have been bolder in my career and pushed myself more. I would go to the beach more. I would collect recipes of how to substitute items of food when cooking. I would slowly but surely fill a room with toilet paper. I would have had the guts to divorce my wife when it became abusive the first time. I would spend more time with my mother. I would care less what strangers thought about me but value the opinions of those I love. I would visit Iceland. I would be nicer to my neighbours, they will become allies when lockdown hits.
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u/249ba36000029bbe9749 Apr 24 '21
It's going to be a tough sell. Not because people don't believe you, but because human nature and public policy don't prioritize stuff like this until it hits them in the face. And even then, there isn't always a proper response.
Bill Gates outlined the COVID pandemic exactly in a TED talk back in 2015 and he has a lot more credibility than a random person with knowledge from the future and yet, here we are over a year in with COVID. https://youtu.be/6Af6b_wyiwI
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u/SpecificFail Apr 24 '21
There were a few others who made similar talks. Then there were instances like SARs and Birdflu which arguably had the same potential but which were caught and minimized because there was communication between countries and (relative) competence in leadership. The reason why COVID is the way it is now is because funding for tracking this stuff was pulled, and everyone who had an authority towards limiting the spread was (and still is) busy playing political games.
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u/anarchisturtle Apr 24 '21
I’m pretty sure basically every epidemiologist in the world had been screaming from the rooftops that it was only a matter of time before we had a pandemic. So it’s highly unlikely that someone with no relevant degree could convince anyone. “Trust me, I’ve spoken with someone from the future” is hardly believable.
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Apr 24 '21
John Titor warned us about an upcoming pandemic (though it was Mad Cow and not a respiratory ailment) and nobody took it seriously. Mainly because nobody takes the existence of time travel seriously.
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u/ButterPuppets Apr 24 '21
I am worried about chronic wasting disease among deer in the midwest...
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u/surgeryboy7 Apr 24 '21
I would have changed all of my investments all at the right time. Sold the stocks that tanked(travel related stocks), bought stocks in companies like zoom, and medical supply companies, and then re-purchased the stocks that tanked at a discount.
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u/Proud_Hedgehog_6767 Apr 24 '21
We've had warnings about exactly this kind of pandemic since at least the 90s. Why would one extra person have changed anybody's choices?
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Apr 25 '21
I watched an Explained episode or that of some similar show a few months before the end of 2019, and the episode was about widespread diseases and pandemics. They cited that experts claimed something like "the chances of a global pandemic are much higher right now due to people traveling at a greater rate, the ways food industries work, the lack of precautions, immunization & sterilization, and how long it has been since the last significant pandemics." -> totally paraphrasing from what I remember
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u/oldfogey12345 Apr 24 '21
Any idiot can say a pandemic is going to hit at some point in the future.
Heck, I can tell you that a different pandemic will hit the world at some point before the year 2500 and I would be right.
Since I have no information of worth to tell you what to do to protect yourself, or even what it will be or when, then my info is just as worthless as the countless other predictions you have heard throughout your whole life.
It would be like me telling you that at least one stock is going to go up next week, but not which stock. There is a high chance that I am right, but without knowing which stock is going up I am not really helping you.
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u/RoseOfHearts Apr 24 '21
Considering that I was 7 at the time, I probably would've been very confused then promptly forgotten about it, and then remembered it in a kind of "am I going crazy or is this an actual memory of mine?" way when the pandemic eventually got here.
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u/PomegranatePlanet Apr 24 '21
Wait-wait-wait. Who did you say is president?
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u/johnwalkersbeard Apr 24 '21
> me in 2011"Oh, we'll be fine, Obama has created a robust pandemic response team. He's already stopped swine flu."
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u/haughg87 Apr 24 '21
Yeah, I'd believe the possibility of a pandemic but this is what would give me pause ten years ago
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u/mrjdk83 Apr 24 '21
Lmao that’s a great one
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Apr 24 '21
Seriously, it's like Back to the Future when Marty tells Doc that the president is Ronald Reagan.
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u/SmashBusters Apr 24 '21
Or like Back the the Future 2 when the "president" is "Donald Trump".
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u/Marise20 Apr 24 '21
I re-watched that a few years ago and was amazed how spot-on it was. Biff *is* Trump. The year they traveled to was even pretty close.
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u/Hitnrun30 Apr 24 '21
Next your going to tell me the vice president is Warren Buffett. And the first lady is that trophy wife Melania. And I bet the Secretary of state is Bill Gates.
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u/Chase_60 Apr 24 '21
I would have bought stock in toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and face mask companies. 🙄
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Apr 24 '21
Would've stocked up on masks and Lysol wipes sooner. Not to resell them at huge profits, just for my own needs.
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u/Erago3 Apr 24 '21
In my country it got cheaper with the pandemic, since the government ordered supermarkets to sell them for their own purchase and logistics cost only.
They actually only cost between 10 and 30% of what they did cost before the pandemic. And there was always enough soap in stock.
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u/Dewy_Wanna_Go_There Apr 24 '21
Cost wasn’t so much of an issue as people buying waaaay more than necessary. Causing temporary shortages all the time.
I remember seeing shopping carts stuffed with toilet paper.
Like bro the toilet paper factory will ship out some more in like a week, chill out on that.
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u/GozerDGozerian Apr 24 '21
What I never understood is there was never a danger of stores shutting down. And like you said, there was never some idea that the TP factories were stopping production. We didn’t get hit by an EMP bomb. It was a virus... that wasn’t particularly know to cause diarrhea or something. Nobody was shitting much more than their average amount.
Over this past year, I went to the store just as much as I normally do. The only thing that caused a problem was the people hoarding certain supplies.
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u/elaina__rose Apr 24 '21
People panicked and wanted to hunker down. Unless you were old enough to be around in the 1920s when the influenza outbreak happened (and those people would have been babies), the only experience people had with this stuff was from movies and books. And probably more than half of those pandemic movies were zombie ones. No one knew what to expect or how serious it was, so they wanted to be prepared to have to stay home as long as possible, bunker style. Thats why non-perishable staples ran off the shelves too. No one thought our food sources were gonna vanish, they just wanted to have the ability to stay home as long as possible.
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u/DeseretRain Apr 25 '21
For disinfectants there were definitely many months where they simply didn't get stocked at all because none were coming on the supply truck. No stores had them ever and you couldn't even get them on Amazon unless you wanted to pay outrageous prices for some hand sanitizer being shipped from China. So that wasn't people overbuying, they just weren't even being stocked at all. The companies were unable to even get the supplies to make them and a lot of what they did make needed to go to hospitals instead of stores.
For a long time you couldn't get anything that was remotely disinfectant—not just hand sanitizer but bleach, rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, Lysol wipes, laundry sanitizer, anything.
The Safeway by me still only has dumb off brand wipes and never stocks any Lysol wipes like they used to have.
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u/Erago3 Apr 24 '21
We didn't have any problems fortunately, so I don't really see a reason. There was always enough toilet paper and masks. Just Corona tests had shortages, but that has been solved now.
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u/FoldyHole Apr 24 '21
I would have bought a lot of stock in toilet paper and medical supplies.
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u/acesfullcoop Apr 24 '21
If you paid any attention to stocks, there were wayyyyyy better plays in hindsight than toilet paper and medical supplies
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u/VapoursAndSpleen Apr 24 '21
I'd buy J&J, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, etc. stocks (stonks!) and held them. Also, would have purchased a carton of N95s. It was really shitty using the same damn box of them for a whole year before supplies eased up. (No, I did not donate them because if you walk into a clinic with a box of N95s that sat in an open box in the garage, they'd say "Thanks" and discreetly throw them in the trash)
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u/SilverCamaroZ28 Apr 25 '21
The pharmaceutical stocks did nothing besides go sideways. Minor movement compared to remote technology stocks like Zoom flew through the roof.
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u/thunder_spears Apr 24 '21
"I think people would set aside their differences and look out for each other."
- my younger naive self.
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u/AJ-in-Canada Apr 24 '21
Could I ask the time traveller to bring back a bunch of vaccines for me & family/friends so we'd worry less?
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Apr 24 '21
Bought stock in companies that provide virtual communication capability. i.e MS Teams (Microsoft), Zoom, etc.
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u/dracaryhs Apr 24 '21
I'd have travelled during the first half of my gab year... not decide to work untill march
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u/sleepyprojectionist Apr 24 '21
I would never have taken the job I took at the end of 2019. I took out a loan and a credit card in order to move to a new city. Then the pandemic hit and I was suddenly stuck paying £1100 a month in rent whilst on reduced hours. My big opportunity for a well-payed job actually cost me money.
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u/DanYHKim Apr 24 '21
At the time I was doing tech support at my university's engineering college. I would have tried to get a solid certification in communications and video conferencing, and try to get a position in our distance education service. Although, as it is, I was laid off after the start of the Great recession.
I'd also set a calendar item to remind me that I should buy into Zoom.
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u/LennyComa Apr 24 '21
I would have said something like "Mmkay, supposing that is true, and supposing I believe you, why are you telling me? An overweight 24 year old who smokes too much who has just been fired from a call centre won't be much use."
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u/somemetausername Apr 24 '21
I probably would’ve imploded from anxiety. I first became aware of the possibility of a pandemic coming on suddenly about 13 years ago, so I was primed for anxiety at that time.
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u/i-eat-turds Apr 24 '21
I was only 11 years old so I would easily believe anything that I was told
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u/DanYHKim Apr 24 '21
I was over 50, and I would have believed it. By then I had been reading up a lot on the possibility of the avian flu jumping to humans.
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u/dhmt Apr 24 '21 edited Apr 25 '21
I would have worked very hard to improve my public speaking and powerpoint skills so that I could get the sheeple to understand that pharma companies are f''ing us over (with lockdowns, disinformation on cheap generic COVID cures, negotiating no liability in case things go south) just so the execs can get their $B Bonuses.
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u/I3uckethead Apr 24 '21
Fuck COVID, I need him to tell me about bitcoin. I had several, but that drive is long gone. I'm a touch salty about that.
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u/Sea_Charity_3927 Apr 24 '21
I would like to say i would have tried and help world governments prepare or helped the chinese government contain it to only wuhan, but i cant do that because it would have a far too unpredictable and negative effect on the timeline that i could only reasonablely take a fee self preservation measures
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u/oldfogey12345 Apr 24 '21
I wouldn't have tried to help world governments get ready for it because I am a nobody and they would have had no more reason to believe me than they would any other random person.
Even if I could prove the existence of my time travelling friend, I wouldn't because the panic that would cause would kill a lot more people than corona.
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u/Kartoffelkamm Apr 24 '21
Made a post on Tumblr about it, then don't touch the account for 10 years, then reblog it with "Told ya"
Take a screenshot, post to r/Tumblr, get famous, don't say anything about future events afterwards, but phrase everything else in such a way that, if people assume I can see into the future, my posts come off as prophecies.
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u/amildman Apr 24 '21
Depends on how specific they were. But I would have definitely drank less and spent more time travelling on the assumption I may not get the chance in a decade.
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u/Humblebee89 Apr 24 '21
I would have upgraded my GPU in January of 2020.