Well if it's anything like the pandemic of 1918, it's especially not looking good for Florida. During the 1918 pandemic, the areas that sharply restricted and continued to restrict public activity did much better economically in the long term than areas that did not. To paraphrase the famous words of philosopher George Santayana. "Even those who remember the past are are condemned to repeat it."
I think the quote is "Those who FAIL to remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Kinda left out the operative word there.
You're correctly remembering what Santayana said. The version with "even those who remember the past" is widely used. Obviously it isn't a "paraphrase" of Santayana, as its meaning is different. It's also not just people misremembering what Santayana said and getting it wrong. It's an ironic comment riffing on what Santayana said, and clearly captures something lots of people have observed. I haven't dug into it enough to see if there's a discernible first person who should get the credit for originating it.
Correct. I improperly used the term "paraphrase" since I changed the meaning of the quotation. I was attempting to say that both people who remember the past and those who don't remember the past are both capable of repeating it. I'm no scholar of the 1918 pandemic but I may know a little more about it than the average person having had living quarters 50 years ago in a formerly abandoned World War I era army barracks at Camp Funston, Kansas where the first known case of the "Spanish Flu" in the U.S. occurred. And I couldn't help noticing the unusually high number of gravestones of primarily younger people (e.g. under 30 years old) who died in 1918-1919 while photographing thousands of gravestones for genealogy projects. It's a good thing that the COVID-19 virus isn't affecting mainly the younger population like the Spanish Flu did in 1918/19, otherwise the kids currently filling the beaches of Florida would be decimated.
Just for a data point: our 2010 has build-date August 2009, and we bought it in November 2010 with ten kms on the odometer. Not a typo, not thousands, just ten. That is with a brand-new (hybrid) battery, but fwiw, it's been fine since. These days we're getting out at most about once a week. Yesterday we went for an extended drive, bit of a hike with the dog. In another week at most we'll need to do a short drive for groceries. Every little bit helps.
Not to mention that sometimes the people who remember are condemned to repeat it by the people who don't. Produces grumpiness.
The majority of the people in the world are clinically stupid. It doesn't make any difference if they remember the past or not.