# What stuff is going to be called "pre-COVID-19" in the future? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [March 29, 2020, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611 "2020-03-29T18:29:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/1 "2020-03-29T18:29:42Z")
There are things, particularly related to air travel, that changed permanently after the attacks of September 11th. Behavior like greeting people with flowers as they get off a plane or visiting a cockpit during a flight are called “pre-9/11.” I think this pandemic is going to leave a much bigger footprint on human culture than 9/11. What kind of things are going to go away? What will we say is “pre-Covid-19”? ---
**Author:** ![Carryon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Carryon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carryon)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/2 "2020-03-29T18:32:45Z")
pre-pandemic ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/3 "2020-03-29T19:05:16Z")
Hopefully wet markets and live animal markets in China and other parts of the world will end. I think the world will pass a variety of laws preventing multiple animal species from being kept alive in confined spaces at meat markets. Having fragile supply chains that break down in a pandemic. I’m guessing a lot more redundancy and decentralized supply chains in the future, rather than putting everything in China. Having most of our PPE, pharmaceuticals, etc come from one country is a bad idea. I’m guessing the world will fund pandemic research far more in the future so we aren’t caught so off guard. I’m also guessing we will ramp up production of the machinery to make things like PPE, but it’ll sit idle most of the time. I don’t think handshakes or public displays of affection will go away. I just think we will be quicker to abandon them the next time a virus goes around, then go back to normal when its under control. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/4 "2020-03-29T20:18:46Z")
As I said before, so much depends on if this ends with a bang or whimper. A bang would be a vaccine, and even if its 18 months, that would still feel like we won, we beat it. If it’s just wave after wave until herd immunity and mutation make it merely endemic, like flu, it will be really different. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/5 "2020-03-29T20:33:47Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Hopefully wet markets and live animal markets in China and other parts of the world will end. Just like alcohol consumption ended when Prohibition passed? No, alcohol consumption went underground as will probably wet markets and live animal markets if they are banned. ---
**Author:** ![Anny\_Middon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@Anny\_Middon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anny_Middon)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/6 "2020-03-29T20:34:12Z")
I think we’ll call it “BC” – for “Before COVID-19.” Something I think may go away entirely is taking cruises. The industry had already gotten hit pretty hard by illness spreading and other incidents. (Remember that ship that for some reason lost its plumbing and passengers had to defecate in plastic bags?) My guess is the well-publicized instances of ships with sick/dead passengers having trouble finding a place that will let them dock, and the arduous quarantine suffered by passengers after docking will be the death knell for the industry. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/7 "2020-03-29T20:51:25Z")
Coronaviruses other than COVID-19 (such as rhinoviruses, SARS, and MERS), in the context of how contagious and lethal they were or weren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/8 "2020-03-29T21:08:44Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > What kind of things are going to go away? Maybe snow days? Thanks to the pandemic, many students and teachers are being forced to go online. Now that schools have some experience with online education, I’ve wondered if, in the future, once things get back to “normal,” school superintendents will be less likely to just cancel school altogether for bad weather, and more likely to declare “distance learning” days. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/9 "2020-03-29T21:47:07Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > Just like alcohol consumption ended when Prohibition passed? > > No, alcohol consumption went underground as will probably wet markets and live animal markets if they are banned. Prohibition had a lot of loopholes and law enforcement wasn’t nearly as competent as it is now. More importantly, wet markets are gigantic and will be very hard to hide from law enforcement. You can’t have a giant wet market show up without the cops finding out. Especially when peopel realize that a wet market could give rise to a disease that wipes trillions of dollars in economic growth out of the global economy and kills millions. Its not a good metaphor. Also China may allow wet markets with much more strict hygiene and biohazard rules. Which will satiate the demand w/o using black market wet markets as much. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/10 "2020-03-30T01:08:13Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Having fragile supply chains that break down in a pandemic. I’m guessing a lot more redundancy and decentralized supply chains in the future, {…} Article in Washington Post on related topic: [The virus shows that making our companies efficient also made our country weak](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/27/economic-efficiency-resilience-coronavirus/?itid=mc_magnet-coronavirus_2), Roger Martin, _Washington Post_, March 27, 2020. > [@](#): > > Efficiency is an unforgiving master. It crushes everything not in service of an immediate bottom line. But if there is a single economic policy lesson to learn from the coronavirus pandemic, it is that the United States’ obsession with efficiency over the past half-century has brutally undermined its capacity to deal with such a catastrophic event. > Efficiency requires us to force out duplication and redundancy, increase specialization and more seamlessly connect things together. Resilience, on the other hand, enables us to adapt to changes in our environment. Efficiency and resilience are opposing forces in our economy, and the pandemic has shown us the high price we are paying for the modern focus on efficiency at the expense of resilience: We don’t have immediate access to the needed test kits, masks and ventilators because it wasn’t efficient to have mass production of these items in the United States, and we’ve come to believe that stockpiling supplies is wasteful. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/11 "2020-03-30T01:14:25Z")
Well, here’s hoping democracy isn’t one of them. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/12 "2020-03-30T13:06:17Z")
I proposed in another thread “BCV”. I also mentioned seeing people on TV calling it “The Before Time”. ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stuff-is-going-to-be-called-pre-covid-19-in-the-future/850611/13 "2020-03-30T13:57:36Z")
I think any economic or financial predictions made before March 2020 for after March 2020 will receive a “pre-COVID-19” tag.