The 1918 flu didn't result in major changes, the Russian Revolution actually had a bigger impact.
One way or another, COVID will peter out sometime next year;
a) it burns it's way through the population and we get herd immunity, we're probably over 10M infected, when we hit 200M we'll be there, of course, this is the worst case scenario, with a half million to million dead, but it won't cause a social collapse, the death of 0.3% of the population isn't the same as 30%
b) we get testing and tracing in place, and a treatment is developed by the end of summer that reduces mortality in the vulnerable infected, society opens up, we get a half million infected per month in a steady state, but the CFR is down to 1% and the IFR down to 0.1%, basically a bad flu that doesn't go away. We live with 5K dead a month for a year. The 2017-18 flu killed 60K.
c) we put in place (b) and a vaccine is developed in the fall and implemented on a mass scale by next summer and we go back to the new normal.
COVID-19 is bad, but it's not the end of civilization bad.
That's still coming someday.
If we're lucky, COVID puts a big enough scare in society that we're prepared when a really bad virus emerges, something with a R > 2 and IFR in the 5-10% range. Maybe a superflu,or a Coronavirus or a mutated Rhinovirus or . . .
