U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

For another example see touch-screen automotive UIs, universally hated by everyone except the bean counters, so we're stuck with them forever.

Also WRT the BK next door, its probably 5 minutes away by car or 30 minutes away on foot, which explains the corporate push toward "Walkable cities" and so forth. At my last onsite office job, there was a deli on the first floor and we were essentially captive customers; in theory there were plenty of places to walk within a half hour walk, but in practice its raining and 40 degrees so we were forced to shop at the company store, so to speak.

These are bold claims backed up by little to no data other than your anecdotal observations. Productivity has generally been on a steady upward trend in the US since it was first measured in 1947. My own professional service business, which does require a decent amount of "bullshit paperwork" would not have been possible at the scale it achieved without technology.

> In contrast, if you tried the same processes few decades ago, it would mean hiring dedicated people on both ends, and the costs - as measured by their salaries - would be clearly visible.

Ever seen Mad Men? There was literally a full floor full of human beings typing out bullshit letters on typewriters because computers didn't exist in the era.

According to the Ford Motor Company, its fuel economy ranged between thirteen and twenty-one miles per gallon. There are vehicles on the road today that do worse than that; have we really made so little progress in more than a hundred years? But focussing on miles per gallon is the wrong way to assess the environmental impact of cars. Far more revealing is to consider the productivity of driving. Today, in contrast to the early nineteen-hundreds, any American with a license can cheaply travel almost anywhere, in almost any weather, in extraordinary comfort; can drive for thousands of miles with no maintenance other than refuelling; can easily find gas, food, lodging, and just about anything else within a short distance of almost any road; and can order and eat meals without undoing a seat belt or turning off the ceiling-mounted DVD player.

A modern driver, in other words, gets vastly more benefit from a gallon of gasoline—makes far more economical use of fuel—than any Model T owner ever did. Yet motorists’ energy consumption has grown by mind-boggling amounts, and, as the productivity of driving has increased and the cost of getting around has fallen, the global market for cars has surged. (Two of the biggest road-building efforts in the history of the world are currently under way in India and China.) And developing small, inexpensive vehicles that get a hundred miles to the gallon would only exacerbate that trend. The problem with efficiency gains is that we inevitably reinvest them in additional consumption.[0]

In other words, you're too narrowly focusing on "miles per gallon", not the fact that "any American with a license can cheaply travel almost anywhere, in almost any weather, in extraordinary comfort; can drive for thousands of miles with no maintenance other than refuelling; can easily find gas, food, lodging, and just about anything else within a short distance of almost any road; and can order and eat meals without undoing a seat belt or turning off the ceiling-mounted DVD player."

For example, in the show Mad Men, you'd see a whole floor full of human beings who's sole job was to type out letters on typewriters. Now, those jobs are obsolete and the white collar worker is responsible for them. Still bullshit paperwork, but the white collar worker now has to do them.

The overall trend for productivity since it was tracked in 1947 has been on an upward trend with its sharpest 1H downward trend ever this past year. Are you seriously suggesting white collar workers magically got more bullshit paperwork just these past 2 quarters?

[0] - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/the-efficiency...

60% of 160 million is 96 million. So 5% of that is 4.6 million people or so with at least a solid portion of a year of symptoms.

There's mounting evidence that some of the damage could take years to recover or even be lifelong.

The current word from the Mayo Clinic is about 20% of folks have what they're calling Post-COVID Syndrome between one month and one year after an infection, with at least one symptom likely from the viral infection. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...

If we look at 20% of 60% of the workforce that's around 19 million people symptomatic for over a month after the initial positive test. Twelve percent, almost one in eight people in the workplace.