Life After COVID-19: Ten Ways Our World May Change Forever
No one knows what lies ahead but one thing is certain, when this epidemic is over, life as we know it will never be the same again
Some claim that the consequences of the coronavirus epidemic are going to be so disruptive that they’ll change the meaning of the terms B.C. and A.D., which will be used to refer to the Before-Coronavirus and After-Coronavirus periods. Without going that far, one thing is certain — when this ordeal is over, the world will not be the one we left behind last February, just as the world wasn’t the same in 1945, after the second World War, or in the early 90s following the collapse of communism. There is also the unfortunate possibility that the virus will not completely disappear but that we’ll enter a period of “cyclical waves” or even “end up with low level endemic disease that (we’ll) have to deal with”[1], as Dr. Bruce Aylward, one of the World Health Organization’s top experts, seems to suggest.
In either case, these are some of the changes that will have a lasting impact on our everyday lives:
1. Remote working: will be the biggest and most obvious change. Teleworking was already an option for many professionals, especially in the technology and consulting areas. But it was always met with resistance on the part of employers, who seemed to think that having their staff physically present at their company–even if that meant having them stuffed into noisy open spaces or ‘cubicle farms’–was the best way to squeeze out the maximum value from them. During the epidemic, teleworking has been vital for many companies, and hopefully this will be a catalyst for managers and HR directors to realize that apart from an emergency solution it’s also a good thing for both the companies and their staff. Teleworking saves staff a huge amount of time and money, making them more relaxed and less tired, and therefore better disposed to deliver quality work; it also saves office space, rent, heating, cooling, lighting, furniture and general expenses; it finally relieves cities from traffic and pollution, which is a benefit to everyone. So be prepared for a significant proportion of people to remain home after the lockdown period, and to work from there on a permanent basis.
2. Remote learning: in the educational sphere, at least at university level, online courses and webinars will easily replace crowded amphitheatres and uncomfortable study rooms. It’s obvious that this cannot apply to every type of study, such as those that require lab work and practice-based workshops. But apart from these cases, universities will progressively increase the number of courses taught exclusively online and be more and more tempted to offer students the option of choosing between on-campus study and distance learning.
3. Remote shopping: the model invented by Amazon 25 years ago will become the new norm in shopping. Apart from the big chains, most small and medium-sized businesses will invest in efficient online stores or will sub-contract their e-commerce activity to specialized service providers. As a consequence, courier companies will thrive. Curiously enough, and in contrast to the general trend, small neighbourhood shops, especially those open 24-hour stores may survive and become the rare points of physical contact for customers.
4. Public events: the very concept will undergo a profound change. Conferences, book presentations, opening and graduation speeches, gala events, and political party meetings will routinely be held online and projected on large plasma screens with surround sound, to set the tone and recreate the feeling of those nice old “physical” parties of the pre-virus era.
5. Corporate life: executive travelling will have to be reduced to a minimum, and teleconferencing will be the mainstream way to gather, discuss, negotiate and sell. As a result, the whole value chain of hotels, business lunches, limo transfers and the like will be downsized considerably. Board meetings will be typically held on screen, (no drinks offered at the end), and it seems quite probable that fancy restaurants will offer take away meals to be taken to the company CEO’s private dining room.
6. The internet: all these ‘remote living’ activities will bring a large increase in demand for communications, especially for high-speed internet connections. The internet will become the most important “factor of production”, to use an economic theory term. Expect large investments in communication infrastructure, servers, cloud services and other relevant digital services. Communication lines and digital infrastructure will become the most valuable asset of each country.
7. Public health: in the post-virus world, health will become the prime strategic issue of every nation. Austerity policies, in place since a decade, will have to be abandoned and massive investments will be made in intensive care units, emergency departments, isolation facilities, and strategic stocks of protection material. Health systems will be redesigned from scratch in order to be made resilient, scalable, and capable of handling exceptional situations. Remote medical services will flourish, turning our smartphones into ECG recorders, blood pressure monitors and glucose meters.
8. Poverty: governments may finally be obliged to find a solution to the homeless problem. So far, even in the wealthiest western countries, large numbers of homeless people have been roaming through large cities without anyone seeming to care much about it. The epidemic has made it clear that this situation poses a significant threat to public health as it prevents isolation. It has also highlighted the huge social disparities that in cases of emergency such as this, leaves those who were once on the brink of survival, now totally helpless, which is ethically intolerable in our modern societies.
9. Risk perception: governments and corporations will have to re-invent the basic concepts of risk across the board. Attention will shift from the usual set of risks (financial, operational, legal, etc.), to ‘unconventional risks’, such as: infectious diseases, extreme weather events, cybercrime, and the like. As these risk categories are not easily quantifiable, new methods must be developed, focusing on subjective probabilities and opportunity costs, rather than the classical approaches based on statistical distributions and value at risk.
10. Climate change: since 2006, when Al Gore’s movie ‘An inconvenient truth’ was released, climate change has been the focus of global attention. Ever since, national and supra-national authorities issued thousands of regulations and recommendations in the hope of placing the economy on a low-carbon path, while, more recently, highly publicized persons like Greta Thunberg created mass movements of civil action. But the coronavirus epidemic demonstrated that the imminent threat to humanity wouldn’t come from extreme weather events, but rather from infectious diseases. Consequently, the focus will now shift to the perceived causes of such diseases, especially to biodiversity issues and the devastating effects of altering ecosystem equilibrium: ‘biopolitics’ will become the new star of public debate.
These are only some of the changes that are likely to occur; other will follow, affecting practically every area of our lives. Quantifying the costs and benefits of these changes and translating them into gains of economic efficiency that hopefully lead to growth, will undoubtedly be the next big challenge.
[1] https://time.com/5805368/will-coronavirus-go-away-world-health-organization/?fbclid=IwAR1UoXtZC7rh4p3nNXXN9LLFB0Wk0s7sboMsxAJcAXHoylow5AbKd9XlBuY
