Probably Not. I mean, besides the historians and history students, no one's looking for parallels between us right now and the fall of Rome, or even the end of the Middle Ages, which might be more apt, considering it ended with the plague.
The fall of the US, and even the global society as we know it is inevitable. And that sounds conspiracy fanatic-esque, I know. But think about it! Every great civilization, from the Greeks to the Romans to the Egyptians, has fallen at some point.
Yet we want to believe that we are inevitable, and rightfully so. It's unfathomable to imagine a world in which our own country ceases to exist and is taken over by, say, warlords. And so, we say that we're too developed, too technologically advanced to fall. Historians, though, disagree.
As Patrick Wyman, who hosted the podcast The Fall of Rome, says, "you don’t stop thinking of yourself as a Roman just because there’s no Roman army anymore.” Similarly, we can't stop thinking of ourselves as Americans, even as the fundamental concepts of America are turned on their heads. With that comes the American way of thinking - one of freedom and independence and rights. Usually a beacon of hope, this way of thinking can now be deadly.
Think about it. At some point, we become so set in our mindsets, that we fail to adapt to changes. There was this New York Times article I read that was talking about how people in the US are now being forced to consider the possibility that there might not be a tomorrow, but that's just a reality that people in the Middle East deal with every day.
And our inability to change this mindset is seen in the way people protest at having some of their liberties taken away, even if for the prevention of further outbreak. People are assembling, protesting stay-at-home measures and putting themselves and others at risk because they are unable to adapt to the new circumstances.
We don't stop thinking of ourselves as free and unlimited even when we're not. And that blinds us to the danger.