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The world that emerges from the coronavirus pandemic will be fundamentally different, Axios Future correspondent Bryan Walsh writes.

• Why it matters: This crisis may prove to be as significant as the 2008 financial meltdown or even 9/11.
• So the choices that businesses and governments are making now will have enormous social and economic ramifications.

The intrigue: U.S. health and government officials are facing the epidemiological equivalent of the “fog of war,” worsened by a massive American failure to act on weeks of warnings as the virus spread in China.

• The Trump administration declared a national emergency yesterday, seven weeks after the first U.S. case was announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• By failing to rapidly scale up testing, U.S. officials have added an additional — and partly unnecessary — layer of uncertainty about how to respond.
• Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina calls it “the most daunting virus that we’ve contended with in half a century or more.”

Flashback: As recently as the 1918 influenza pandemic, scientists lacked the ability to rapidly respond to an infectious disease outbreak.

• Today, scientists can sequence a virus in days, develop rapid tests that can determine infection before obvious symptoms, and use complex mathematical models to predict future spread.

What we’ll find out in coming days:

• The actual fatality rate of the virus.
• How contagious it is, and the precise role that children — who seem outwardly unaffected by the disease — may play in transmission.
• If the outbreak will naturally slow down when the weather warms, as tends to happen with influenza.

What’s next: For now, distance becomes the first line of defense. Schools and companies are shifting online — with potential consequences.

• If companies are able to function relatively well with a largely remote workforce, expect lower levels of business travel.
• After decades of emphasizing the efficiency of supply chains — which often meant complex international linkages and just-in-time inventories — businesses will look to build resilient supply chains.

The bottom line: The mobility — of people, capital and products — that we’ve taken for granted may not outlast the virus.