> there will be a great deal of compasionate hand wringing about palitability, texture, etc
Hand wringing? Giving your army palatable and tasty food is important, when soldiers don't eat it, they perform worse at fighting. That's why the US spends so much effort on changing their menus and trying to make their heavily processed food into something that looks appetizing, like the MRE pizza that somehow lasts three years:
A lot of people are still on ancient plans like $80/5GB since they don't know they can change providers and still keep their number. Or they're old and avoid changing any aspect of their lives. The mobile companies are fine with "grandfathering" these customers.
Mobile companies will never, however, grandfather plans which have better value. They will happily grandfather more expensive plans, hell they won't even tell you.
The high gas prices also push people towards EVs. Those new EV owners are very unlikely to return to gas-powered vehicles, even if the cost of gas goes back down. Gas demand isn't quite as elastic as we've been assuming for decades.
There are reasons why this outbreak is slightly more newsworthy than others.
It happened to rich Westerners, not a bunch of poor people from Africa.
It happened on an international flight and a cruise ship. There is a lot of exposure. There are people being monitored for hantavirus being sent back to their respective countries.
People are having flashbacks of 2019/2020 and comparing the news coming out about this outbreak.
The political season is in full swing in the US and there is lots of finger pointing, especially around the health departments.
In the previous 2022 gas price spike, some stations could not dispense more than $100 worth of gas since that would previously indicate something wrong with the station.
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