{"id":4133,"date":"2020-04-26T16:19:27","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T13:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=4133"},"modified":"2020-04-26T16:19:29","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T13:19:29","slug":"how-will-the-world-change-after-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2020\/04\/how-will-the-world-change-after-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"How will the world change after COVID-19?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On September 11, 2001, I was in France on a business trip. I had been up most of the night coaching our company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s CEO on a presentation he was to give the next day. By noon, I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stay awake any longer: I went back to my hotel to take a nap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I woke up, the world had changed forever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I was walking back to the convention center, my wife, Jody, called me on my cellphone. Terrorists had flown planes into the Twin Towers in New York. The conference was canceled, and our team began a frantic search to find a flight home before, as expected, all air travel was halted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many of us, the COVID-19 pandemic is the second time we are seeing the world change in front of our eyes. As Israeli author David Grossman writes<\/a>, this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153plague might become the fateful and formative event in [many people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s] lives.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When 9\/11 happened, it was difficult to foresee the far-reaching changes the attacks would wreak. It feels much the same now. When this pandemic is finally brought under control, what will our world look like? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are a few examples in three areas I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been tracking: work, travel and personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By now, many of us have become Zoom power users for classes and community. But video conferencing tools stand to significantly upend the status quo at work. As Jeff Tennery, CEO of Moonlighting<\/a>, a U.S.-based job site, told me recently, when employers realize that many of their employees are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153equally productive working remotely, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll ask why they should drag them into the office.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Employees will be wondering the same thing.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It turns out, an awful lot of meetings \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 really could have been an email,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d adds<\/a> Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor-in-chief of\u00c2\u00a0Reason<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0magazine. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And now they will be.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, once a certain percentage of your staff doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to come into the office every day, employees won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to live as close to their places of employment. Real estate prices drop. Traffic-clogged highways could open up. It might even change the calculus on whether to own a car or use public transportation or ride sharing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another side benefit that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already being observed: without all those cars on the roads, pollution is down. The air quality in Los Angeles is now among the cleanest<\/a> in the U.S. Could Zoom be the unexpected key to addressing climate change?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVID-19 has put a serious crimp in the Israeli penchant to jaunt off for a cheap trip to Europe, Asia or South America. When the planes begin to fly again, will we need proof we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not a risk in order to board? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

China has already implemented a mobile app<\/a> that indicates who can travel outside of their homes and who must remain in quarantine. One must scan a QR code<\/a> in order to enter a school, a grocery store or subway station. Green is good. Yellow or red \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not so much.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To avoid an endless loop of lockdowns, some sort of similar system will be needed for global travel, too \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a digital certificate indicating lack of illness or immunization. There are serious privacy concerns that must be addressed; the potential for abuse is not trivial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for meal service, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153passengers might grab their own beverages and snacks as they board through the jet bridge,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes<\/a> Erich Schwartzel in\u00c2\u00a0The Wall Street Journal.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>On the upside,\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>expect cleaner planes as citizen crews wipe down every tray table and toilet seat, adds<\/a> Chris Shipley, the former executive producer of the DEMO tech conference series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personal relationships<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post COVID-19, will people resume hugging and shaking hands? Guy Winch<\/a>, author of\u00c2\u00a0How to Fix a Broken Heart<\/em>, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so sure. He suggests we may face \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a prolonged emotional and psychological crisis, even after a vaccine or treatment for the disease is found.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interviewed<\/a> in\u00c2\u00a0Haaretz<\/em>, Winch posits that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it will take a long time before we feel secure enough to draw close to and touch other people.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And the longer we refrain from human contact, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the more difficult it will be to reverse course.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeling comfortable in public spaces may also remain difficult, once the lockdown is over. Would you risk getting sick by dining in a restaurant? Intimate dinner parties at home with trusted friends and food delivery may become the new way of eating out. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Watch parties\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from your living room may replace movie theaters and concerts for a while to come. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dating could radically change, too, when hook-ups culture could kill you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rise of HIV and AIDS \u00e2\u20ac\u0153completely changed sexual behavior among young people who were coming into sexual maturity at the height of the epidemic,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Elena Conis, a historian of medicine at UC Berkeley, explains<\/a>. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The use of condoms became normalized. Testing for STDs became mainstream.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the equivalent for COVID-19? Netflix and chill that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really Netflix and chill?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of these points ignore perhaps the most important question: do we even want<\/em> to go back to the way things were? Is this an opportunity to make substantive changes to the political, economic and environmental standards that have, to date, seemed immovably entrenched? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is an implicit contract between modern states and their citizens based on the capacity of the former to ensure the physical security and health of the latter,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes<\/a> Eva Illouz, a research fellow at Jerusalem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Van Leer Institute. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Without health and a healthy public, economic transactions become meaningless.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is, just as after 9\/11, we really have no idea what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coming next. And that, like COVID-19 itself, is perhaps what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most unsettling about the coming new age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first pulled out my COVID crystal ball at <\/em>The Jerusalem Post<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How will the world change after COVID-19? Here are a few predictions: for work, travel and personal relationships (including sex).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[66,11,117],"tags":[285,281,282,283,279,284,278,280],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4133"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4138,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4133\/revisions\/4138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}