Ask HN: How will the world change post pandemic?
I think society will remain largely the same on the surface. Underneath, we&#x27;ll see some interesting changes from an American perspective. Here are a few off the top of my head:<p>1. The Cat&#x27;s Out of the Bag<p>- So many things can&#x27;t really be taken back. The myth of &quot;you need to be in the office&quot; is destroyed. There are benefits to being in the office, but many people are continuing their jobs as normal -- and perhaps even performing better! We&#x27;ll see a shift in the workforce as remote working becomes more palatable and almost a necessity going forward. This will have more subtle ramifications on the global economy as jobs no longer need to be local to be acquired. (To be clear, most businesses will force their employees to come into the office, but the WFH option is going to be much more attractive after this, and successful businesses will have to adjust.) Because of this, we may see companies eliminate physical offices altogether, and there might be a small decline in corporate real estate. I don&#x27;t really think this last bit will happen, but it will be interesting to find out.<p>- Movie distributors have started to allow &quot;in-theater&quot; movies to be streamed via Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Google Play. It&#x27;s 20 bucks for a movie, which is expensive for a digital rental, but it&#x27;s far cheaper than going to a theater. Those of us who only went to theaters for big releases might still go, but we&#x27;ll see a shift in people staying home with their families and friends watch a $20 movie and free(ish) popcorn and candy on a giant TV screen, rather than spending $50+ just to see a movie in theaters. The physical movie theater experience will have to shift to something more special, like Alamo Drafthouse or something along those lines.<p>- In the education space, most parts of the United States have the concept of &quot;snow days&quot;, which are days in the calendar that are provided in case of weather-related emergencies such as hurricanes or snow, where schools have to be shut down or are otherwise inaccessible. The cat&#x27;s out of the bag on this one. No more snow days. Your classes will be taught virtually. If your local schools don&#x27;t do virtual classes now, you can bet they&#x27;ll be preparing those for the 2021-2022 school year and beyond. This may or may not have ramifications for the idea of &quot;school districts&quot; as well. Private schools may go virtual. Homeschooling rates may skyrocket. Not sure what exactly to expect here, but at the very least, snow days are over.<p>2. Industries and Businesses<p>- Whoever cracks the code on virtual socialization will make billions. Zoom and Skype are designed for businesses: 1 person talks and the rest listen. They don&#x27;t work for groups socializing or party atmospheres. Whoever can figure out how to make that work... well, let&#x27;s just say I wish I were them.<p>- Along those lines, virtual entertainment will skyrocket. Virtual board games, &quot;pub crawls&quot;, movie nights, you name it.<p>- Just as a lot of companies in the software development industry have pivoted to &quot;mobile first&quot; development, we&#x27;ll see businesses and restaurants rethink their business models to be &quot;delivery prepared&quot;. Gourmet restaurants will have to come up with cheaper delivery menus. Who&#x27;s going to pay $40 for three pieces of ravioli with caviar on top to be delivered to their house? Nobody. But we will pay $40 for a good pizza, some garlic bread, and maybe some wings. BYOB, of course. Bookstores, shoe stores, board game stores, vinyl record stores, Gap, West Elm, IKEA, and any other store that relies on foot traffic will have to come up with backup plans in case foot traffic disappears. If they can&#x27;t do this, they&#x27;ll go out of business. Worse than that, many of those kinds of businesses will just never have newcomers because it may be too difficult or expensive to have a backup plan. (Gamestop, for example.)<p>- Just because we can start going back to work in July doesn&#x27;t mean this is all over. We&#x27;ll still need to social distance on some level, wash our hands constantly, wear masks, and be careful. Concerts, airplanes, bars, gyms, and other places where people get tightly packed in will have to have alternative business models to survive in that new reality. Not only that, but for the near term there will still be fear of those places. How do they cope when people are afraid to come to a concert? How many people can you fit into a bar on Super Bowl Sunday and still maintain some semblance of social distance? Long term? They&#x27;ll probably go back to normal. But for the short-to-medium term, there will be a number of changes there.<p>3. Social, Economic, and Legal Change<p>- It is highly likely that we will lose protections out of fear, just like we did post-9&#x2F;11 with the PATRIOT Act. Things that seem innocuous and necessary on the surface, but over the long term have devastating consequences. States, counties, cities, and other municipalities now have precedent for ordering everyone to stay at home. Not quite martial law, but close enough that the slippery slope has started. I&#x27;m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I can see governments shutting down businesses or venues for &quot;reasons&quot; that may or may not be true.<p>- Divorces and breakups will go up in the short term, as people are cooped up together in ways that they never had been before. There will be a ton of babies in 7-10 months. Population demographics will change.<p>- The recession will have longer lasting financial impacts in certain sectors. I&#x27;m not an economist, so I can&#x27;t go into much detail here, but housing prices, imports&#x2F;exports, transportation, and hospitality downturns will have ripple effects across everything else. We might see investments diversify even further into new sectors, or maybe double down on tech. Who knows?<p>- Hospitals will (hopefully) be better staffed, especially with emergency equipment like ventilators. On the flip side, ERs will be overwhelmed for the short-to-midterm future, with patients flooding it out of fear that their cough might be coronavirus or whatever the next big pandemic will be. This will have an impact on city budgets, tax revenues, and more.<p>- The FDA, OSHA, and other health and safety organizations will introduce new regulations designed to prevent the spread of another pandemic. More red tape. Maybe it&#x27;s worth it, maybe not, but it will almost certainly happen.<p>- The unemployment numbers will cause a shift in the country&#x27;s economy. A lot of these people won&#x27;t have jobs to go back to, so entire sectors of industry might disappear overnight, and others might shoot up out of nowhere. The gig economy will see a boost in the short-term.<p>- Social programs like unemployment insurance, universal basic income, and some flavor of Medicare for All will become immensely popular, even more so than now. I&#x27;m not confident that anything progressive will come out of it in our current political climate, but we&#x27;ll almost certain see public support for these things increase to new levels.<p>- Not a prediction, but I&#x27;m a little curious as to how (or if!) the anti-vaxx movement changes as we emerge from this pandemic.<p>I can think of a few others, but I&#x27;ll leave it there for now. To sum it up: in the short term, the changes will be drastic, medium-term things will be rocky, and long term things will largely return to normal but the fundamentals shifted with long-lasting but subtle (or not) implications. Most Americans&#x27; day-to-day life won&#x27;t appear to be that different in a year.