I was 15 and a sophomore in high school on September 11th. I had weight training first period (so jacked bro), so I didn't learn of the first plane hitting the tower until late in the morning. I showered in the field house and walked up the bleachers back toward the main school building, when I ran into John Ross. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center" was all he said.
I don't remember much else from that day. I think I remember them sending everyone to homeroom and watching the news silently in class. I don't remember if we were watching when the second plane hit, or if we were watching when the towers fell. It's hard to separate real memories from the retelling of the story over the years. I don't even remember my feelings then, but I doubt my adolescent brain would have been able to put it into words the way I could if it happened today.
Impact: We still wade through the after effects of the War on Terror every day, but largely 9/11 was a singular event, with its epicenter in New York City. Most people in the country outside of NYC didn't directly know someone who lost their life either in the tragedy or from the hazardous conditions of the attempted rescue and cleanup missions.
Blame: The perpetrators were a small (on a global scale), homogeneous group of people. A "them."
In 2008, I was wrapping up my last two semesters at Georgia Tech. I was fortunate to get a job in March during the Spring career fair, so I was on autopilot for the second half of Spring semester semester. I had banked most of my "easy" classes for the summer, so even with 15 hours of classes I was poised for a fairly carefree summer. Commencement was on a Friday in early August, and I started work the next Monday. Six weeks of training in Chicago followed, and then I was back in Atlanta, eager to start selling some machine vision systems. My territory would primarily consist of automotive manufacturers in a small sliver of Georgia and the entire states of Alabama and Mississippi. Lehman Brothers collapsed four weeks later, the banks and the auto industry got bailouts just to stay afloat, and for a long time, no one was buying what I was selling (literally - I didn't sell anything for a full year).
The damage came in waves over the next months. My primary source of news was The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and the more people he lampooned, the more it just seemed like everyone was responsible. In the years following the recession, Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera wrote All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, which cemented my distrust for anything related to finance.
Impact: Seemingly everyone was either directly impacted or knew someone who was, but few people died as a direct result of the financial crisis. A lot of people and institutions lost a lot of money. My parents' retirement was gutted. People were forced from their homes. A decade later the country was aggressively riding a bull market to new highs, but many neighborhoods, towns, and cities never fully recovered.
Blame: There is no way to really attribute blame in such a complex system, so I'll just list people who had a hand in it. Corrupt subprime lenders. Financial organizations like the banks and ratings agencies that put market share and profits ahead of clients. Paralyzed and powerless regulators. Vulnerable (and some may argue irresponsible) mortgage borrowers. There were villains, victims, and villains that thought they were the victims.
COVID-19 is a different kind of crisis. It started as a "China problem" and it wasn't a big deal (according to our government leaders and the media). At least not until it was a Big Deal. Capital B, capital D, Big Deal. Most people like me are about to start their second week with mandatory work from home policies in place. We've left the house a handful of times for groceries, twice to pick up drive through orders from Target (kid toys, toiletry essentials), and once to take the car (and kids) through an automatic car wash; with a three and a five year old you'll take whatever cheap thrill will get you by. Estimates for how long life will be like this range from 30 days to many months. If people continue to stay home we can flatten the curve, and as long the internet doesn't break from the increased sustained load, most people will be ok.
Impact: Likely. Every. Single. Person. In. The. World. Think about that. We are barely into this event, and as of this writing on March 22 there are ~328k confirmed cases. The sheer scale of an event that impacts 7.5B people is not something easy to comprehend. In the US it will get worse before it gets better. For Americans, this won't be like 9/11, where maybe you kind of knew someone whose cousin's mother-in-law went to synagogue with a lady whose grandson was killed in the attack. COVID-19 will kill people you've met before. Maybe not your parents, but a neighbor. People who are young and single may never meet grandmother or grandfather of their future spouse. Potentially their mother or father. Businesses will close permanently. Some industries may never recover. The economy will grind to a halt, and people will be scared to leave their houses for months to come. The societal scars of COVID-19 will be visible for a long time.
Blame: No one? Everyone? Do we blame the bats in the live animal markets in China? Do we blame ourselves for invading nature and creating the demand for exotic animals that lets those markets exist? Do we blame anti-vaxxers and others steeped in denial, who call this a conspiracy and continue to send their kids to gymnastics camp and soccer practice? How about the young people who just don't fucking get it, or are just too selfish and immature to care? Many more eloquent words will be written about this than I can write. For now, stay home, keep paying the people you would normally pay even when they aren't performing their services (like house cleaners and hair cutters), support healthcare workers however you can, and say important things to the people you love the most.