If this pandemic hit >10 years ago before remote work enablers like zoom, teams etc and before people had access to ultra high speed internet, economic activity in this country would have collapsed. /1

In 2011, Netflix was responsible for 49.1% of all downstream internet traffic. Netflix forced ISPs to build infrastructure to increase available bandwidth on residential internet connections. /2

At the same time, Amazon sold so much stuff that they needed to build cloud infrastructure to support their own sales and decided to allow other companies to leverage the AWS cloud. /3

Microsoft, Google, Oracle and others followed suit to build cloud infrastructure to allow Zoom, Teams and Google Suite etc to scale to millions of simultaneous workers. /4

Many of these companies themselves use their own software and systems to allow millions of people to work from home through this pandemic. Each one, fortunately is perhaps a job saved. /5

We're in a goldilocks zone where we had just enough of the infrastructure built to support remote work at scale. The pandemic is the first true test of these systems and thus far they are acing it. / 6

Not everyone has a job that enables them to work remotely but for those fortunate enough to have the opportunity, this infrastructure quietly built over the last ~10 years by disparate companies has collectively saved the US and the world from certain economic collapse. /end