Life after coronavirus: Everything will change
“Coronavirus will change the world permanently,” said Katherine Mangu-Ward in Politico.com. It’s “reshaped” how we socialize, work, eat, shop, even greet each other, and once it’s safe to leave the house, some transformations will stick, “for better or worse.” Maybe most of all, “Covid-19 will sweep away” any remaining resistance “to moving more of our lives online.” There will be more internet-based education, whether it’s homeschooling or classrooms going digital. More work will be done remotely, now that it’s clear many meetings can be conducted on Zoom. Workers will resist going back to “having to put on a tie and commute for an hour.” Now that we’ve seen the capabilities of digital life, “it will be near impossible to put that genie back in the bottle.”
“Every economic shock leaves a legacy,” said
Enda Curran in Bloomberg.com. In 2003, China’s SARS outbreak “changed shopping habits as people avoided the mall.” Coronavirus will also accelerate the e-commerce takeover, as people learn how easy it is to get everything delivered, even groceries. Those habits will ripple across the entertainment industry, said Alyssa Rosenberg in WashingtonPost.com. Hollywood’s business model was already “in flux,” with movie studios fighting to keep theaters above water. Major releases like the Mulan remake and the latest James Bond installment had to be postponed. Desperate for revenue, Universal last week announced it would offer some movies as $20 streaming rentals “even while they play in theaters.” As much as consumers already loved staying home, streaming new movies could “make theaters obsolete.”
Arguments against universal health care “are collapsing,” said Luke Thibault in JacobinMag.com. Coronavirus exposes the interconnectedness of our health-care system; one person’s illness endangers everyone and takes a shared economic toll. “With unnecessary misery mounting,” the need for major reform becomes painfully clear. But some reforms on the table, said Yuval Noah Harari in the Financial Times (U.K.), could destroy medical privacy “for years to come.” To stop the virus, “entire populations need to comply with certain guidelines.” That’s an excuse for governments to expand tracking with smartphone data and facialrecognition software. “Big Brother” could eventually police handwashing. “Temporary measures have a nasty habit of outlasting emergencies, especially as there is always a new emergency lurking on the horizon.”