La goutte qui a débordé le vase. In French, the drop of water that overflowed the vase. In English, the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Whether we think about it or not, every system has limits beyond which things stop working predictably. They reach inflection points. You can, for example, slow down an airplane and it will fly normally, just slower. When you reach a certain point, it doesn’t slow down, it falls out of the sky.
Now you could define the overall experience, including the inflection points and use that data to define an overall system, and subsequently, super duper inflection points (my term) for the whole, including the initial inflection points, but I am off point. Sorry.
My original point is that all systems have their inflection points.
I am hoping that the inflection point in the spread of the virus is only an aberration . . that we haven’t reached, given the mixtures of peoples, governments, rules, societies, etc. a real inflection point, beyond which there is no going back.
A plane, after it has stalled from lack of speed, can be recovered, but at a much different altitude.