Even as people are still joking about the temporary pause in day-to-day activities because of the coronavirus, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and industries have been affected in ways that we cannot even imagine.

Just take a peek under the blanket of normalcy and see what’s really happening around the world. It’s bad enough that hundreds of thousands of people could die from this virus, but in the long term it’s the economic downturn that will be remembered. We are headed for another Great Depression, not a recession like in 2009.

Never before in modern history have so many industries closed. Never before in modern history have so many people been put out of work so quickly and abruptly. The economic effect of all of this can be nothing other than total catastrophe and financial ruination. It will affect not just some mom and pop restaurants in town, but it will affect every single person in the world. We are all about to get really poor.

Everybody knows that public gatherings are discouraged or even outlawed right now. Public dining, restaurants, bars and nightclubs, casinos, sporting events – all have been canceled or put on indefinite hold.

This is not going to end in two weeks time. This is going to last for a long time.

To see what effect this is going to have, let’s take a look at sporting events. Here in Amarillo, Texas, the city invested millions of dollars to construct a minor league baseball park downtown. Last year, the local team, known as the Sod Poodles, won the Texas division championship. Thousands upon thousands of people flocked to the stadium, purchased tickets, ate food, drank beer, and provided the baseball players themselves with an opportunity to get drafted into the major leagues. Now all that money has stopped. Who do you think is going to be affected by the sudden lack of cash flow? A lot of people, including the city of Amarillo itself.

Now look beyond our little baseball park in Amarillo to huge sporting events like the NFL or Major league baseball. The NFL is going on like the football season is going to continue. We don’t know that at all. Even if it does continue we don’t know if anyone will even show up for the games because of fear of the virus. Who do you think pays the baseball players or the football players? It’s the revenue generated from the ticket sales and advertisements. All of that is in suspended animation. All of that is lost. Along with all of that lost revenue is thousands of support businesses.

Earlier I mentioned casinos being closed. Well of course casinos are a place where a lot of people gather in tight spaces and play slot machines and gamble in other ways, right? Casinos on Native American reservations are closed. Now think about Las Vegas. The whole city is closed. How many people are unemployed, how many businesses have bills to pay but no revenue coming in to pay those bills? How many hotels are empty?

So now we’ve got all kinds of people on reservations sick with CORVID-19 and no employment because of the casinos NOT BRINGING IN ANY INCOME FOR THE WHOLE COMMUNITY. Even the Grand Canyon is closed because you have to drive through the Navajo Nation to get to it and hundreds of people in the Navajo Nation are sick with the coronavirus. National Park workers at the Grand Canyon have fallen ill with the virus. So now we have no Grand Canyon to visit.

It’s not one sector of society that’s being affected, nor is it one country. This is the whole world, every nation on every continent being affected by CORVID-19. In some countries, like India, people are already starving. People will become homeless, hungry, hopeless, not just in third world countries but right here in America.

Think about religious institutions. Think about Krishna and Hindu temples that depend on the weekly donations from congregational members. Many churches, temples and synagogues also depend on weeklysupport and donations. Some of them will not survive.

The horror is just beginning. As we hide in place from this virus, the even more insidious financial collapse is taking place all around us. Get ready for what’s to come.