"A moment of unparalleled national humiliation," said one former Republican strategist yesterday.

"A lot of them aren't even pretending to be in charge," said former US President Barack ObamaThe Democrat US president between 2008 and 2016. this weekend.

They are talking about a world in which the most powerful nation on Earth, the country that for 75 years has been considered the unofficial leader and protector of the free worldTermed coined by former US President George Bush to describe his country. During the Cold War, the "Free World" was used to refer to the West, as opposed to the Soviet Bloc. - the USA - fails to fulfill its role.

For many serious commentators, this failure is now becoming part of a wider historic turning point.

As the former World Bank chief economist, Lawrence Summers, puts it in an article in the Financial Times: "I believe the coronavirus crisis will still be considered a seminal event generations from now."

"Students of the future will learn of its direct effects and of the questions it brings into sharp relief, much as those of today learn about the 1914 assassination of the Archduke, the 1929 stock market crash, or the 1938 Munich Conference. These events were significant but their ultimate historical importance lies in what followed."

This crisis is a massive global event in terms of its impact, he writes.

"Almost certainly, more Americans will die of Covid-19 than have died in all the military conflicts of the past 70 years. Some respectable projections suggest that more may die than in all the wars of the 20th Century. I suspect that no event since the civil war has so dramatically changed the lives of so many families."

How will our experience of life change? Of course, it is too early to say. But most of the serious forecasts in recent days agree on three points:

1. The use of technology to monitor populations and their health will stay with us, even when the threat of this disease is behind us.

2. The reliance on foreign countries for essential supplies, like medical equipment, will be seen as unnecessarily risky. International trade and cooperation will suffer.

3. China's emergence as the pre-eminent global force will be accelerated.

Yes. Never before have the lives of so many been so rapidly transformed. Core parts of modern life - from international travel, to the office commute, and social gatherings with hundreds of strangers - have been cast aside. The economic damage and the wide-ranging effects of these months will continue to be felt for many years.

No. Most of the ways in which it is expected to change the world were happening already. China was already well on course to becoming a superpower. More and more people were working and studying from home. Surveillance technology was already being adopted across the globe. Covid-19 will accelerate human history, not revolutionise it.