Permanent changes as a result of the pandemic?

The Quarantine Zone
1

Anyone want to speculate on permanent changes to society or customs as result of the pandemic? I’m not talking about how things are different now but how they will be different five or ten years from now when life is back to normal, without people wearing masks everywhere and pre-pandemic levels of social distancing.

For example, this article (New York Times paywall warning) speculates on how women’s handbags will be less common or changed as a result of the pandemic. (People who haven’t gone to work in months and only rarely leave the home don’t need them as much.)

Many people are cutting their hair themselves or letting a family member do it. Will that continue? Will buzz cuts (easily done using hair clippers) become more popular? (Longer hairstyles require scissors and are harder to do on your own head.)

People are cooking at home, baking especially. Will that continue?

Any other predictions?

2

I don’t think we’ll see truly permanent changes. The stuff you mentioned will probably be around for some amount of time, but people will go back to normal at some point.

A good portion of the population is in denial that there is even a real pandemic going on, even though we’re currently in the middle of it. Fast forward a couple years when COVID-19 is just another thing we live with and people are desensitized to it - the current “normal” isn’t going to stick. Humans are social animals. Handshakes and mass gatherings are going to come back.

3

Handshakes aren’t an intrinsic part of being human though, unlike gatherings. Its just a Western custom that a fair number of people don’t love anyways. Handshakes could easily be killed off by covid. Maybe the kiss greetings in Europe too but I doubt that more.

4

I’m not ready to make any predictions. This has been going on only a few months now. There is a chance that medical research could address the situation to such a degree that this episode will one day be the stuff of pub trivia quizzes.

If this is still happening two or three years from now, then it’s time to start thinking of permanent changes. But just like people throw around the word “miracle” so carelessly, they’re a little too quick to be making predictions now.

5

It’s going to be very difficult for many employers to make the argument that people whose jobs can be done remotely for months on end need to come to an office every day.

I have been doing a halfway decent job cutting and coloring my own (longish, layered) hair in the bathroom mirror. Hairdresser shears can be found for less than $15 online. All the hair infrastructure that I have acquired over the past 4 months still cost less than one salon cut and color. It’s amazing what kind of tutorials you can find on YouTube.

6

Even within the short amount of time that has passed, some changes have occurred that may stick. For example, some are working at home now in roles that it wasn’t thought possible to work remotely. Some will find that it works well, and will continue even after normalcy returns. Telehealth visits by doctors and other medical professions received fast-track approval from insurance companies and regulators and I think that will continue where appropriate.

Some retail business were forced into bankruptcy. Admittedly, some were weak and on the verge of collapse anyhow, but others might have survived if not for the pandemic. And what number of restaurants, both chains and independent local ones, have closed or will close?

7

I’m not convinced any of that is permanent. I can well see bosses saying, okay, it’s over, get your asses back in the office NOW. I can see retail and restaurants building back up in a short amount of time. Etc. You may be right, I just won’t be convinced until more time has passed.

8

Above is well-stated, I too think those changes will stick.

In addition, I think post high school technical/vocational and college online education will be more accepted and available as well. I have high hopes that essential workers will continue to be acknowledged, respected and rewarded as they should be.

9

If this pandemic burns out and becomes a thing of the past, I’m not sure we will see any permanent changes. The most vulnerable industries are obviously the ones that pack a lot of people into crowded indoor spaces. Concerts, indoor sports, movie theaters, malls, etc. I expect we will see bankruptcies in these industries.

Working from home is here to stay for some people. Not everyone, and change happens on the margins. But some of the people who started working from home during the pandemic are never going back. And the longer we keep working from home, the better the tools and practices will get. If productivity can be maintained, there are gong to be a lot of businesses realizing that they don’t need that expensive downtown real estate any more, and move to virtual workforces.

We are already seeing a migration of people out of the cities. Suburban and rural real estate is up, urban real estate is down. This trend has been going on for a while, but COVID is accelerating it. And the breakdown of law and order is helping.

If businesses and individuals (especially the well-off ones who can afford it) leave the cities, the cities are going to face huge funding shortfalls and will probably raise property taxes, accelerating flight further. It could be a vicious spiral that, like inner city Detroit, leaves large American cities a mere shell of their former selves.

Or, everything could be completely back to normal in a year. The future is unpredictable.

10

I thought the movement in recent years was back to the cities.

11

Now, let’s say this virus turns out to be permanent, like the common cold (four different coronaviruses), and no vaccine is developed. Or, this one goes away but another novel virus shows up in a year or two and we go through it all again. In that case, there will be major changes in how we live.

I have no idea how it will pan out, but just for fun I’ll create a possible future timeline for a world where infectious disease is everwhere and can seriously harm or kill you. Since we don’t know the future and this is going to be certainly wrong, call it an outline for a science fiction story about a possible post-covid future.

2021: After scientists determine that immunity from Covid only lasts a few months, and that Covid can do permannent damage to anyone if they survive it, a wave of bankruptcies sweeps through vulnerable businesses as they give up trying to weather the storm and admit their business models are dead. Movie theaters, sports franchises, and businesses large and small that require tightly packed workers all go under.

2021: Commercial office real estate collapses as companies move to virtual workforces. The rise in work-at-home drives huge investment in new tools for remote work. Microsoft, Google and Amazon grow to new heights in value because of their cloud businesses which are now necessary for the workforce to function.

2021: The combination of suburban work-at-home and urban flight causes traffic to drop dramatically in the cities, which now have an excess of road infrastructure. Electric cars become more popular as the need to travel long distances drops and cars stop being lifestyle items.

2022-2024: Amazon and other large online retailers continue growing. Amazon spots an opportunity in the cheap real-estate and open lanes for traffic in cities and starts buying up property to use for local fulfillment centers. Amazon cuts deals with cash-starved cities to lease dedicated traffic lanes not needed for commuting any more, and ‘shipping’ lanes are dedicated to automated package delivery vehicles. Cities begin to look like large Amazon warehouses, with constant streams of automated vehicles moving goods about efficiently. This means you can order something and have it delivered in minutes or hours, not days. In addition, automated package movement means that workers can move physical goods between them easily and quickly.

Restaurants leverage the package moving infrastructure, and the in-person restaurant becomes a novelty as most food is delivered.

For rural workers, drone delivery becomes popular. Automated drones can bring light packages to anyone within 50 miles of a drone hub within an hour or two. This, combined with the now-available Starlink satellite internet system, means you can live anywhere and give up nothing in terms of connectivity and access to markets. This revolutionizes how people live, with the most common model now being small acreages and rural homes near fulfillment centers.

2021-2023: Education is completely transformed. Students now study at home, and once major online companies get involved, the traditional school system collapses. Teachers become contractors to groups of students, or employees of online teaching companies. Corporations who need technical talent abandon university degrees in favor of known technical training programs, or like Bell and Howell did with DeVry in the 50’s, they create their own educational programs to meet the shortfall.

Dead shopping malls and office blocks become cheap real estate, driving new entrerpreneurs to create ancillary education facilities like labs. Studefnts can go to their local strip mall or mall to do lab work in small labs with half a dozen socially-distanced and isolated students at a time. Degree programs are abandoned in favor of ‘skills matrices’ that can be filled by taking courses from any number of providers. Organizations similar to ISO or other certifying bodies create standards for courses that count towards filling your matrix. Education gets cheaper and better.

The Ivy league schools are in big trouble, as their value is as much in in-person networking as it is what they teach. Other universities adapt and go online and lower costs and prices, but the Ivy League model is in big, big trouble. This is a good thing and will help with income inequality and the domination of Ivy League graduates in positions of power and privilege.

2022-2025: Manufacturing is revolutionized by 3D printing, CNC machining, and automation. Because people won’t work in crowded factories, a new model emerges: Distributed manufacturing, where instead of having a corporation own a giant factory, small businesses will open that subcontract parts. The new automated transportation network means parts can get where they need to go to be assembled quickly. A future company is a mom-and-pop shop consisting of a few machines that anyone can buy. They go online and look up requests for parts they are qualified to make, download the CAD files, and start making parts. They get paid and ship them to the assembly company, and move on to the next job.

Here’s an example where the potential is for technology to reduce inequality by allowing workers to really own the means of production, because the means have been democratized by technology. The pandemic forced this change, but it may have been coming anyway.

In the end, society becomes much more distributed and isolated, with automated movement of goods and heavy reliance in online communications and perhaps Virtual Reality. House prices come down as people aren’t required to pack into the same area of expensive real-estate. Rural people have the same access to everything as everyone else, leading to more diversity.

12

There is net inflow to the smaller, cheaper cities, but the big cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and others are seeing net outflows. But many of them would look even worse if not for immigration. New York City had been losing native residents for a long time, and only maintained its population through outside immigration. I believe the same is true in many other big cities.

In a locked-down world where immigration slows to a crawl, the big cities are in trouble, as are California and New York state. New York has lost 1.8 million citizens to net U.S. internal migration since 2010. California has been losing population to other states since the 90’s, only making that up through immigration. If immigration collapses, lots of things will change.

13

Interesting thoughts Sam.

I now tele-work. I’ve been wanting to for years. My bosses boss is hinting that this may be what we do from here on out.

We are a small IS department for county government. There are 16 of us. The operations arm still has to travel around from site to site as hardware needs to be upgraded and otherwise physically attended to.

A few of us working remotely have no choice but to work over satellite internet. So speed and latency is an issue, but we are getting our jobs done. New tech (like Starlink) should help that, but who knows, could be something else.

I sent out an email to entire team March 13th that that the powers that be MUST come up with work from home policies. I was mildly scolded for that (admittedly, I think they where already working on it, and I shouldn’t sent it to everyone on our team, just the bosses). Two days later, I was told to stay home and they are working on connectivity (was a not expressed ‘told ya so’ moment for me). I’ve gone into work once to pick something up since this all started.

The county built and owns our current office space. It also contains the main branch of the library which is now open on a limited basis. I don’t know what’s going to happen there.

Also hinted at is some grousing from some people in other departments that really, can’t work from home. They have to have bodies in the office. I expect that will be a difficult hurdle for some and require finesse from managers.

14

Reality is that we are no where near the level of automation to bring that approach to the entire world. Brazil, India, even much of the USA, living like that is not available for more than a minority of the people, and it would be evidenced over time. Society is not sustainable at that level in 2020.

Reality is also that disease has been with humans since our beginning, and we are a product of living with disease and not alien to it. A zest to live in interesting and unique times isn’t going to change that. If there are no other solutions, people will bury and mourn the dead, and this particular disease will wane or be absorbed into the greater fabric.

15

No cite, but I read somewhere that new permanent health codes will make buffets impossible. That’s probably good news for my fat ass, but I’ll miss the Chinese buffets with sushi.

16

Green Forest Churrascaria , a local Brazilian restaurant I’ve loved for decades, is closing down because a large portion of their shtick is a giant buffet.

My gf renegotiated her contract and will be working from home for the remainder of her working life. She may have two Wednesdays each month when she might have to go into Pittsburgh.

For me, I can say with confidence that I will not shake hands again, nor will I have someone cut my hair.

17

Here is how one local-ish smorgasbord is currently operating. I would not feel comfortable going there now or any time soon. I’ve also been down the shore where some buffets are open, but cafeteria style where there are servers dishing out the food instead of self serve.

18

I can well see employers like mine, who lease many floors in an expensive Manhattan office building, realizing just how much money they can save by having their workers work from home and subsidize their real estate costs. If they can lease half the amount of space they lease now, that’s all money in the partners’ pockets.

Nothing in the staff’s pockets, of course, even though I’m now paying for some of their office space.

19

However, the workers should be able to get tax exemptions for home office use.

20

The owners are still getting a better deal. Not really a surprise there.

And I know that’s how it’s going to go. For my firm, at least. From what I hear, it’s already under discussion.

So I’ll have to carve out a permanent office space from my already cramped apartment, which I share with my wife and three children.

The tax break isn’t enough compensation. It isn’t any compensation at all, in fact.

Whereas the partners will save literally millions of dollars in real estate costs every year.