# A realistic look at the future in a COVID world -- 2020, 2021, and beyond **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [September 11, 2020, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-realistic-look-at-the-future-in-a-covid-world-2020-2021-and-beyond/920340 "2020-09-11T11:42:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 146
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2021, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-realistic-look-at-the-future-in-a-covid-world-2020-2021-and-beyond/920340/146 "2021-03-20T19:52:58Z")
> [@Jay\_Z](#): > > Most studies I have seen are that participation rates in nearly every activity have been on the decline for years now. I expect COVID to accelerate that trend. More screen time all around, more people staring at cell phones. I don’t consider that a healthy development. Thank you for this tight bottom line. As you suggested upthread I had badly misunderstood your point. Oops on me. Thanks also for your patient correction. I completely agree with what you say here. Lots of people will be more insular and less societal once this settles into whatever the “new normal” really is. I’m particularly concerned about the number of comfy-class suburbanites who’ve retreated into their all-but gated houses in their virtually, if not physically, gated communities and now have everything delivered while home-schooling their kids. There’s enough overwrought stranger danger and raging paranoia out there already without massively encouraging that as “sensible precautions” against the Chaos of the Great Unwashed. See also this post and the article it cites. The overlap between their points and yours is concerning to say the least. > [@Anyone else kind of disillusioned with America after Trump?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-kind-of-disillusioned-with-america-after-trump/937413/102): > > I think this article hit the nail on the head, describing how America has actually already become a fascist society. Basically it describes how we are a society that extols this sort of Nietzschean, Ayn Randian value system of social Darwinism and not giving a shit about anything besides amassing wealth and power (even if most Americans are too stupid and/or lazy to have read Atlas Shrugged or the works of Frederick Nietzsche). What I see that doing for America is continuing to push us toward… --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-realistic-look-at-the-future-in-a-covid-world-2020-2021-and-beyond/920340)._