What if these are the good old days?

Bleak vision is emerging after warning that things will get worse

News articles don’t carry Hollywood-style viewer ratings or trigger warnings. Maybe this one should. But consider this: What if these are the good old days?

Depressing as that might seem after the coronavirus pandemic has claimed well over 630,000 lives worldwide, cost tens of millions their jobs and inflicted untold misery across the planet, it’s entirely possible — increasingly likely, some say — that things will get worse before they get better.

A bleak dystopian vision is emerging in some corners. It’s not pretty.

It imagines a not-too-distant future where we’ll all look back with nostalgia at 2020 as a time when most of us had plenty of food and wine, could get many of the goods and services we needed, and could work from home at jobs that still paid us.

“This could be as good as it gets, so let’s take pleasure in what we have now,” said Katherine Tallman, the CEO of the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

The pandemic continues to buffet the planet economically, dashing hopes that the worst of the joblessness might be behind us.

And in online forums, futurists see the potential for worse. Much worse.

What if humanity’s frantic efforts to produce a vaccine take longer than envisioned?

What if that coincides with a climate calamity that ruins crops and shatters supply chains, stripping supermarket shelves bare of much more than hand sanitiser and toilet paper?

For all our complaining about masks, could we one day find ourselves having to don hazmat suits just to leave the house?

Is it such a stretch to imagine the economic fallout wipes out entire industries, setting off a global Great Depression, part two?

The pandemic is “going to get worse and worse and worse,” World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “There will be no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future.”

Even President Donald Trump, in a notable departure from his generally insistent stance that the US has the outbreak under control, said the “nasty horrible” virus “will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better”.

Margaret Hetherman, a New York City-based writer and futurist, thinks some of our darker pandemic experiences — things such as fighting over canned goods and hoarding toilet paper — could foreshadow more dire years ahead if global warming continues unabated.

“We’re getting a taste of what could be ahead if we don’t get control of ourselves here. The empty shelves could be just the beginning,” she said.

For businesses and consumers alike, a new order appears to be dawning — one in which the risk of viral outbreaks increasingly is seen as perpetual, not a one-off.

The pandemic has pummeled airlines and the hospitality industry. The American Hotel and Lodging Association warns that more than 8000 US hotels could close for good as early as September. Politics, too, cloud the horizon and moods. For some, a dystopian future includes four more years of Trump’s chaotic presidency.

If these do turn out to be the good old days, at least there are things for which we legitimately can be thankful: more time and meals together with loved ones; and an extended reprieve from soul-sapping commutes. “Even now, we can find joy in a day,” said Hetherman, the futurist. “Even if we’re in a hazmat suit.”