Post COVID, what things in life will be fundamentally different?

[fuzzy math]

What industries do you think will disappear forever? What alternate methods that we're adapting to will become standard sooner because of quarantines?

My list:

- telehealth visits (were simply not available for many specialties and insurance frequently didn't pay the same). I'm guessing they will be covered permanently and much more available.

- Cruise lines. I don't see them ever being able to recover from this. For at least the next winter season we have to see how the virus plays out. What country is going to agree to possibly accept a boat full of 1000 sick people again? What 70 yr old couple wants to go on one?

- Online courses / e-learning / homeschooling. For both K-12 and universities, I think the sudden wide availability of school at home will continue. Many people may permanently pull their kids out of school over ongoing illness issues now that they've been forced to learn to homeschool.

-  Universities will go bankrupt eventually. Lots of money is tied up in having a fancy campus. With universities being closed we are learning  the optics of those fancy buildings do little to contribute to the education of students. Please note, I am not arguing that university buildings themselves are pointless. Many hours spent in science labs were the fundamentals of my education. The $$$ spent on optics for a university may no longer be valued as much.

- Hospitals are going to go bankrupt. Frankly I do not know how they will recover. The 1- 2 punch of an influx of patients at a time when many are losing their insurance and the ability to pay for care. Not good.

[bacchi]

I agree about telehealth and cruise ships. The cruise ship industry is in for a long contraction.

- Re: telehealth, will we be able to talk with foreign doctors that have been vetted by our insurance provider? I.e., can I chat with a less expensive German doctor about my cough?

- Universities closing? No way. Look at all the seniors that are saddened about missing their last semester. Going to a U is not only about an education; it's also about interacting with thousands of your peers. There will always be people willing to pay for that. There are also many people that just don't do well with distance education.

- Hospitals will be propped up with government funds if necessary. There might even be a short spike of medical equipment purchasing as hospitals and local governments prepare for the next pandemic.


Other things:

- Travel will decline. Not only will the recession decrease travel but so will the desire to spend time in exotic locales with limited medical coverage.

- Will telework increase?

[Sibley]

I think you're pretty confident that we will remember all this in detail. If people remembered hard, painful scary stuff that well, there would never be any 2nd children.

There will be changes. Whether they will be universal or permanent, who knows?

[rantk81]

- More people will install and use bidets.

[maizefolk]

I vote for telework increasing, and other jobs disappearing entirely when businesses send the folks who currently do those jobs home and realize the company is able to get along without them.

My guess is that this semester is going to leave a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths about the idea of internet based education. There is a good way to do it, but very hard for lots of professors and school teachers to manage it on anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks notice. So it may actually reinforce the preference for in-person education. But even a semester or two of disruption, combined with the dropping stock market, may be enough to push a lot of private non-elite universities that are currently teetering on the edge over into collapse.

My other predictions for long term shifts:

-I predict we'll see america and europe adopt a cultural view on wearing facemasks that is much more similar to the asian model (no one looks at you funny for wearing one out in public, and during flu season most people wear them).

-Shift to more eating at home as generations of people under lockdown who never learned to cook well are forced to experiment out of boredom and many realize they like it/are good at it.

-A growth in the number of one-income families as either fathers or mothers who spend months caring for kids at home during lockdown realize they get more satisfaction out of it than the job they work that pays just about enough to cover childcare.

[chemistk]

I really think this will usher in a new 'normal' for remote work. My company, prior to this, was cool with one WFH day per week and a very very small handful of FT remote workers.

I'm going to bet that in the future, they encourage more WFH days - less electricity/water/supplies consumed at the office for nearly the same level of productivity.

I can imagine many other companies are discovering that virtual work really isn't all that bad.

---

I also think (hope) that this shifts the attitude here in the US of working while sick. So many people just plow through many types of illnesses because they have no sick leave and/or feel compelled to show that they're pulling their weight.

I'd love to see employers encourage people to stay at home/work from home if they're not feeling well and to generally have more protections/offerings for people who are sick so that even minor bugs don't get spread around nearly as often.

---

This one may not be universal to a lot of people, some might laugh/scoff at the notion, but I'd also love for some of the negative stigma surrounding stay-at-home parents to go away. I understand it hasn't always been this way, but my wife receives a lot of flak/jealousy from other people because she doesn't work. Some common themes:

"You're just watching kids, how hard can it be?"

"It must be sooo nice to be at home all day and not have to worry about work-related responsibilities."

"Have you considered getting a part time job to help support your family?"

"You know, in today's day and age, you don't have to stay home."

There have been others, and maybe it's a milennial/genz attitude, but she really gets a lot of negativity because of it. She was also 'left out' of the local moms group because she doesn't work or volunteer. Not everyone has the luxury to have one parent at home, and some people just plain see it as old-fashioned. It would be cool after all this for the SAHP naysayers (at least the ones we know) to change their tune a bit.

[Alfred J Quack]

I vote for telework increasing, and other jobs disappearing entirely when businesses send the folks who currently do those jobs home and realize the company is able to get along without them.

I agree with this. Most of our colleagues could work from home but were not permitted because of information sharing on the workfloor and such. Inside of a week from our governments ban _everyone_ that could technically work from home _is_ working from home. Me and colleagues from IT support had a hell of a job there but got it done.

But a lot of companies are ill equipped to do this properly though. Either with a IT infrastructure optimized for office desktops where only a small part works from home. Our biggest problem was outsourced hardware which had a performance problem outside of our control.

[John Galt incarnate!]

- Online courses / e-learning / homeschooling. For both K-12 and universities, I think the sudden wide availability of school at home will continue. .

^
To these  I add more WFH employees.


It's not 1920.

It's 2020.

Congress ought to change its rules so that legislators can  telelegislate  instead of having to fly to Washington D.C. as much as they do now.

[Zikoris]

I think home grocery delivery is going to continue to be popular post-plague. I think that so many people in North America have basically been unaware of its existence until very recently. Certainly when I used it several years ago, the most common response was "What the hell, you can actually do that?"

[John Galt incarnate!]

I really think this will usher in a new 'normal' for remote work. My company, prior to this, was cool with one WFH day per week and a very very small handful of FT remote workers.

If WFH becomes the norm it will be a boon to  reduction of air pollution.

[matchewed]

I'd argue that the WFH will actually reveal that companies have way more people than they need, or that computers have increased efficiency to a degree that they don't need as many people around.

I foresee another decrease in the civilian worker participation rate (US Metric) that remains fairly permanent.

[Loretta]

I live in an area where there is a nail salon in every shopping center—I suspect many of them will not bounce back after this.  Same with laser hair removal joints and day spas.  Not a necessary expenditure as many people are currently learning. 

The cruise industry is so not necessary and if they receive a government bailout I’ll be disgusted. 

Will more people think twice before going to unnecessary doctors appointments for a sniffle or an ache from here on out, thinking that medical facilities are filthy places to get sicker than when they started out?

[Cranky]

I think people are going to be incredibly eager to send their kids back to school, and delighted to get back to the office.

I don’t think grocery delivery/pickup is going all that smoothly for a lot of people, and personally will never again have less than 50lbs of flour in my house.

[mancityfan]

Movies - the enforced move to streaming may mean the end for theaters?
This is only a hope - we become less celebrity obsessed as a society.
Outdoor recreation - can see a boom. "You don't know what you have until it's gone"
Pro sports - I can see that they may struggle after a boomlet at the beginning when it comes back. People may see their is more to life than slavishly following a team?

[haflander]

Pro sports - I can see that they may struggle after a boomlet at the beginning when it comes back. People may see their is more to life than slavishly following a team?

Ha! Now that's rich, considering your user name. :)

[ixtap]

I think people are going to be incredibly eager to send their kids back to school, and delighted to get back to the office.

Perhaps there will finally be more appreciation for teachers and we can increase their salaries.

[mancityfan]

Pro sports - I can see that they may struggle after a boomlet at the beginning when it comes back. People may see their is more to life than slavishly following a team?

Ha! Now that's rich, considering your user name. :)

Fair comment :-)

[maizefolk]

Movies - the enforced move to streaming may mean the end for theaters?

I hadn't thought of this one, but I agree with you. Movie theaters were already on their way out, but once people get used to watching new releases on day one from the comfort of their own home I don't think they'll ever go back in substantial numbers.

I'd argue that the WFH will actually reveal that companies have way more people than they need, or that computers have increased efficiency to a degree that they don't need as many people around.

I foresee another decrease in the civilian worker participation rate (US Metric) that remains fairly permanent.

It surprises me how many people don't realize many of the types of middle management/white color jobs that existed before 2008/09 never came back and the labor force participation rate never recovered.



The rate of advances in labor saving/replacing computer programs and automation hasn't appreciably slowed down since then, so I agree with you, we'll likely see another sustained decrease in labor force participation.

[Metalcat]

Some people won't need to buy toilet paper for years.

Honestly, the only lasting change I foresee are obvious changes that should have happened anyway but were resisted for irrational reasons, like working from home.

Oh, and yes bidets.
It makes no sense that they aren't more popular.

I agree that movie theatres are probably fucked if people get used to paying a premium for new release theatrical streaming because of this.

Pandemic insurance will either become extremely popular, unaffordable expensive, or cease to exist, like flood insurance in some regions.
It's hard to say...I could ask people who know much more about this, but I won't because I don't feel like it yet.

I'm also curious what affect this might have on other types of insurance, especially travel insurance.

I do consulting for an insurance company, that's why most of my main curiosities are about insurance.

[rantk81]

In the long run, insurance is a scam.

I'm not calling it a scam because the "expected value" of a claim is less than what people expect to pay in premiums.  That's to be expected, and is valuable to an individual, on an individual basis, to insure against an unexpected event.

The reason I call it a scam is, it doesn't protect against the "[insert-large-number]-standard-deviation" tail-risk black swan events, where the insurance company just goes belly up and says "thanks for the fish. we're bankrupt now!  Good luck to all."  And that's kind of what we could be seeing now.

Another reason why I'll never buy an "annuity" from an insurance company.  You'd get a far better effective yield (and have less risk) by just buying a basket of insurance company stocks, and collecting the dividends.

[Metalcat]

In the long run, insurance is a scam.

I'm not calling it a scam because the "expected value" of a claim is less than what people expect to pay in premiums.  That's to be expected, and is valuable to an individual, on an individual basis, to insure against an unexpected event.

The reason I call it a scam is, it doesn't protect against the "[insert-large-number]-standard-deviation" tail-risk black swan events, where the insurance company just goes belly up and says "thanks for the fish. we're bankrupt now!  Good luck to all."  And that's kind of what we could be seeing now.

Another reason why I'll never buy an "annuity" from an insurance company.  You'd get a far better effective yield (and have less risk) by just buying a basket of insurance company stocks, and collecting the dividends.

I'm very curious to see how the company that provides pandemic coverage for medical professionals here fares after all of this.

ETA, I don't consult on individual insurance, I consult regarding professional insurance

[OtherJen]

I think people are going to be incredibly eager to send their kids back to school, and delighted to get back to the office.

I don’t think grocery delivery/pickup is going all that smoothly for a lot of people, and personally will never again have less than 50lbs of flour in my house.

Re: bulk purchases. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I had maybe 2-week supplies of my gluten-free rolled oats (which I eat almost every morning) and chow for our pet rabbits. Somehow during my prep purchasing, I missed those two items. Checked online stocks at local stores. No luck. Checked the website of the company that produces the oats and an online pet supplies website, and the only options were 25-lb bags of each. Both were cheaper per pound than the smaller sizes, even after shipping. I never would have bought the bulk bags before, but now I will always buy them.

[runbikerun]

There are going to be a lot of subtle but interesting changes. There will be much bigger ones, but the small things will be quite unusual.

I'm expecting to see a glut of TV quiz shows in the next twelve months: the format can be developed and put together fairly easily over Zoom, the questions can be written and compiled by question editors at home, the costs are relatively small (one studio set, a week of filming, a minimal crew and you have several months' worth of weekly shows), and it can be done with small numbers of people, so there's far less of an issue with large numbers.

There's going to be a desperate shortage of good rock and metal albums in about a year's time, but fans of cold and alienated electronica will probably be spoiled for choice. We'll also hopefully have a bumper crop of good books somewhere down the line, as authors spend weeks indoors with no distractions.

Work from home will, I suspect, become much bigger. A lot of workplaces will find it's not good enough, but a sizeable enough minority will realise that they've gotten substantial cost savings in return for little to no lost productivity, and will stick with it.

The really big one, and something I think could be profoundly important, is that in some countries, the idea of small-government conservatism will die as an electoral force. We're seeing it in Ireland at the moment; Fine Gael, the most economically rightwing of the main parties, has just announced the government-enforced lockdown of all citizens to within 2km of their homes except for essential work and to buy groceries.and is overseeing the largest expansion of unemployment benefits in Irish history. They will not be the only rightwing party to make this shift.

[GuitarStv]

There's going to be a desperate shortage of good rock and metal albums in about a year's time

You were supposed to talk about things that were going to be different.  :P

[runbikerun]

Oh, I almost forgot: insurance companies are absolutely fucked.

Some will avoid paying out on Covid-19 deaths by claiming force majeure. But a lot will spend a fortune defending themselves in court on that front, and a lot will spend a fortune paying out to the estates of people who die of cancer or blood loss while the hospitals are overrun, and I'd be willing to bet a sizeable amount of money that there isn't a single major insurer on the planet who took the time to work out their likely liabilities in a situation like this and made sure they were adequately funded.

With the obvious exceptions of things like flood insurance, the assumption for an insurance company is that liabilities are idiosyncratic rather than systemic, unlike banks. Bank defaults come in waves, because they're driven by crashes and recessions, but historically insurance liabilities have been mostly driven by individual circumstances. There are slow, sweeping changes, but nothing that can't be caught with careful annual assessment of the numbers. Insurance companies don't carry anything like the same level of assets on their books as banks, because they've never needed to and nobody's ever made them. Now they're going to see a spectacular, shocking systemic healthcare crisis, and the assets they hold to fund their suddenly exploding liabilities are going down the toilet along with the rest of the stock and bond markets.

[runbikerun]

You were supposed to talk about things that were going to be different.  :P

Touche!

[YttriumNitrate]

I'm going to disagree about cruise lines being in trouble. For years they've been known as breeding grounds for various diseases, and yet they remain popular.

https://www.cruisemapper.com/wiki/1056-cruise-ship-norovirus-outbreaks#2018

[mm1970]

There have been others, and maybe it's a milennial/genz attitude, but she really gets a lot of negativity because of it. She was also 'left out' of the local moms group because she doesn't work or volunteer. Not everyone has the luxury to have one parent at home, and some people just plain see it as old-fashioned. It would be cool after all this for the SAHP naysayers (at least the ones we know) to change their tune a bit.

This is hilarious!  I think it varies GREATLY on where you are.  It might be a "young person" thing?  Or possibly your location.  I can see the thought of it being old-fashioned.  Full disclosure: I'm a working mother, but I don't disparage SAHMs, as a bunch of them are my friends.

I've got two kids, and they are 14 and 7.  I'm an "older mother".  I'd say I was a tiny bit on the older side of my mom's group (60 women in the group) with kid #1 (I was 35, and probably 25% of us were that age or older).  We had a large group that met in a church room for two months, then the group splits off and a new group starts.  There was a woman in the group that offered to kind of "take charge" of the meetings after that (holding them in parks, etc.)  Several smaller groups had split off by then, so I'd say maybe 30-40 women left. 

ALL OF THE MEETINGS WERE AT 10 AM MID-WEEK.  ALL OF THEM.  I asked her, once, "would you ever think of having a meet-up on a Saturday?  Maybe once a month?"  The answer: "NO.  I don't work, and a large number of my friends in the group don't work.  Why would I do that?  I don't need any more friends."  (I wish I was making that up, but it's almost verbatim.) 

I went back to work at 13 weeks, which was 1 month into this 2 month group.  So I immediately sent an email to the group, scheduling "working mom meet-ups" mid-week in the evenings at my house.  We had 8-15 at any time, and we got the dads too!  Also, turns out one of the families was LITERALLY across the street and our kids have been best buds ever since.  Working moms were the ones being left out.  Funny that by the time our kids were 2-3, most of them were working again (by then they all had 2 kids).

By the time I had kid #2 I was super duper old.  (42).  The economy was still kind of in the toilet, so there were more working moms in that mom group, but still quite a number of SAHMs.

[ender]

I really think this will usher in a new 'normal' for remote work. My company, prior to this, was cool with one WFH day per week and a very very small handful of FT remote workers.

I'm going to bet that in the future, they encourage more WFH days - less electricity/water/supplies consumed at the office for nearly the same level of productivity.

I can imagine many other companies are discovering that virtual work really isn't all that bad.

Our team was talking about how much more effective we feel at delivering too. I really hope this is true.

[mm1970]

I think home grocery delivery is going to continue to be popular post-plague. I think that so many people in North America have basically been unaware of its existence until very recently. Certainly when I used it several years ago, the most common response was "What the hell, you can actually do that?"

Agreed.  I used to have a CSA membership, but it closed.  Then I tested out home delivery of produce (from a company that was started by the former CSA manager), and it is so great.  So great. 

Both my produce delivery services are SLAMMED right now.  SLAMMED.


I don't think universities will go away.  Certainly I couldn't do any of my chemical engineering labs at home (not safely, anyway).

More WFH though.

[Enough]

- Universities closing? No way. Look at all the seniors that are saddened about missing their last semester. Going to a U is not only about an education; it's also about interacting with thousands of your peers. There will always be people willing to pay for that. There are also many people that just don't do well with distance education.

Already happening: https://www.mac.edu/closure

I dont think we'll see large state colleges closing, but I could see smaller private universities having major financial difficulties.

[Buffaloski Boris]

Well, first off I expect to see folks washing their hands more often.  That's some good news.

Certain co-morbidity enhancers such as high blood pressure and diabetes will become distinctly uncool.  Another good thing.

Homeschooling becomes both loved and reviled as parents get a real life test of it.  I expect that it will grow.

Cruise ships?  I don't expect them to do that well. 

WFH becomes much bigger.  Companies will notice how much cheaper it is not to maintain an office.  On the other hand, a lot of nonessential folks will be let go, so labor force participation drops again.

Budgeting and frugality become very cool out of necessity. 

A baby boomlet happens in about 9 months. 

Lots more people adopt doggies and kitties for companionship.  Another good thing. 

Shaking hands and physical touch is more uncommon, at least in public.

Car ownership takes a hit. 
 

 

[Cranky]

I think people are going to be incredibly eager to send their kids back to school, and delighted to get back to the office.

I don’t think grocery delivery/pickup is going all that smoothly for a lot of people, and personally will never again have less than 50lbs of flour in my house.

Re: bulk purchases. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I had maybe 2-week supplies of my gluten-free rolled oats (which I eat almost every morning) and chow for our pet rabbits. Somehow during my prep purchasing, I missed those two items. Checked online stocks at local stores. No luck. Checked the website of the company that produces the oats and an online pet supplies website, and the only options were 25-lb bags of each. Both were cheaper per pound than the smaller sizes, even after shipping. I never would have bought the bulk bags before, but now I will always buy them.

I pointed out to dh that 20 years ago I bought 125 lbs of flour every fall. The 25 lb bags went on sale then, and I knew that I used about that much every year.

Now my grocery stores don’t even carry those 25lb bags. My kids are grow; I bake less. So I stockpile less, and boy - do I regret it.

[Kyle Schuant]

On my walks and runs here in Australia this last week or two, I've noticed a lot more people out and about walking, running and cycling - and the local park's been busier. Unfortunately they're all keeping their distance, so the usual social benefit of not sitting in your car or looking at your phone isn't there. Still, overall they are improving their physical health.

About a million people have lost their jobs (including me - I had to shut my business), and another million will follow shortly. Another few million are now working from home. So some people have all day free, and others are now more productive without the distraction of the open plan office, and they don't have the commute. This gives people more spare time.


Some jobs are so destructive to the person's mental health they are better-off lost, so that some people's mental health will improve unemployed, but most will I think be worse off. But those who are now more productive and not commuting will see an improvement in their mental health.


More people working from home will mean emptier offices. As well, large crowded shopping centres will become less attractive, and smaller more local shops more so. This, by the by, is going to hurt the commercial real estate market badly. But local businesses will do better - it'll take time because of the likely depression we're facing, but they'll come back up.

The panic-buying has given people full pantries and fridges, and restaurants and food courts have closed, so that people will be eating more meals cooked from fresh(ish) ingredients at home, improving their physical health.

The sight of empty shelves has led many people to start trying to grow some of their own food. Obviously due to space and skill limitations this will just be a token amount, nonetheless being a bit more aware by experience what's involved in natural processes of growth and decay, and the trouble taken to produce food, may improve people's sense of connection to natural processes and appreciation of what they're eating.

As they say in Yorkshire, "it's an ill wind that blows no good."

[Optimiser]

I imagine we will see a spike in divorces too as spouses are spending a lot more time together under stressful circumstances.

[wienerdog]

- More people will install and use bidets.

Lol.  You don't know how many times I have eyeballed the American Standard version at Menards.

[Kyle Schuant]

I imagine we will see a spike in divorces too as spouses are spending a lot more time together under stressful circumstances.

In Australia there's already been a rise in calls to domestic violence support.

But while many bad marriages become worse or break up, I think good marriages will get better.


Without the commute and putting on suits and all that, people are more likely to be able to wake naturally rather than with an alarm. So there's better sleep and mood there for a start, which starts your day with your spouse better.


It varies by location, but the average Australian spends an hour a day commuting. That's now an hour free to do domestic tasks the other spouse is sick of, or neither of you ever did, to have a nice sit-down dinner with each-other and the children, if any.


And the things I mentioned earlier about better physical and mental health being possible, that's only going to help marriages, too.

It's easy to measure bad marriages getting worse, by separations and divorces and domestic violence statistics. It's harder to measure good marriages getting better. But I believe it'll happen.

[Bloop Bloop]

I don't think much will change. People said 9/11 would change the world forever. On a domestic level all it did was make airport scanning more onerous.

I can see incremental increases to working from home, and the like. I can see my taxes going up a fuckload to pay for all these stimulus measures. I don't consider either of them to be fundamental changes.

People will go back to beaches and restaurants the moments the lockdowns are lifted.

[Kyle Schuant]

I don't think much will change. People said 9/11 would change the world forever.

The people of Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan may feel differently.

[Miss Piggy]

I would be happy if people change their illness behaviors, including:
- Cover your cough/sneeze
- Stay the fuck home if you're sick

I don't ask for much.

[Morning Glory]

Germophobia will stay with us for a while and sales of products like purell and Lysol will be higher than before.

People will stop trying to reduce single use plastic.

Greetings such as kissing on the cheek might be gone forever, or reserved for immediate family.

It might become taboo to go out in public while sick.

Many people will keep more food and supplies in their homes for years to come.

[ender]

It might become taboo to go out in public while sick.

We can only hope...

[CopperTex]

There will be a big lull in reality TV shows in about 5-6 months.

[deborah]

There are interesting things happening here with our federation, and in the US with your union. In both places, the national government is being led or flouted by the states as they grapple with what is happening in their jurisdictions. I suspect that some permanent changes to the state/national political balance may result.

There is also the problem of global trade vs isolationism. The current US government has been committed to destroying as much of the global framework as possible - for instance the WTO appeals court was shut down by US administration action/inaction. Covid-19 may accelerate isolationism, or it may accelerate global trade, depending on how things work out in the coming months - for instance if the rest of the world (mainly China) need to swoop in with medicinal aid.

As for the world political balance, at the rate things are going at the moment, the US may be the biggest casualty of the virus. They were already going to exchange positions with China economically some time in the next 10 years - it could now happen overnight. This could be very disruptive over most of the world.

[MrThatsDifferent]

Hmmm, I’m not sure what will change vs what wish will change.

I think the idea of “safe spaces” will increase. People may be more focused on owning property that they can prepare in case of an emergency.

I think there will be more teleworking than ever before. It’s going to be hard for companies to justify not doing it after letting people work like that for 6 months. Distance education will rise as well and everyone who has resisted it, must relent and let it be a viable option.

I think organizations and governments need to return to having doomsday scenario plans in place and drills run.

Once this disease is knocked out, and it will be, a lot will return as before and people may be more determined to be together, touch and interact. People will be starved for affection and tactile interaction. It just take 2 years for this to happen.

Humans seem to have short memories for this stuff. Travel will resume, so will cruises and all of that. We’ve never seen anything like this in our lifetime, and most likely won’t again. However, there could be an environmental catastrophe that is equivalent that we all need to be prepared for.

I’m hoping the world learns more how interdependent we all are on a global level, and governments need to work together more.

[LWYRUP]

I think we will see shifts, not wholesale changes.

A shift towards more remote working.
A shift towards fewer cruises.

This doesn't mean cruises will disappear.  Some people are probably mad they can't be on a cruise right now.  Others will probably swear off them for life. 

I expect folks will generally keep pantries slightly more stocked for a while, and maybe some people are learning cooking skills.  (I am making sourdough starter, so there's that.)  Gardening may be more popular. 

I also think we should see a... renewed appreciation for smaller towns and places that are less dense.  I'm glad I'm not an investor that just purchased an office building with ground floor retail in NY/DC/San Fran with a lot of leverage and a 3% cap rate, for example.  Not that I think these places will suddenly collapse.  But just that some people locked in their apartments for a few months may decide in a few years that they'd rather go back home to Michigan or something rather than throw down their life savings for a tiny condo. 

[Polaria]

Oh, I almost forgot: insurance companies are absolutely fucked.

Some will avoid paying out on Covid-19 deaths by claiming force majeure. But a lot will spend a fortune defending themselves in court on that front, and a lot will spend a fortune paying out to the estates of people who die of cancer or blood loss while the hospitals are overrun, and I'd be willing to bet a sizeable amount of money that there isn't a single major insurer on the planet who took the time to work out their likely liabilities in a situation like this and made sure they were adequately funded.

With the obvious exceptions of things like flood insurance, the assumption for an insurance company is that liabilities are idiosyncratic rather than systemic, unlike banks. Bank defaults come in waves, because they're driven by crashes and recessions, but historically insurance liabilities have been mostly driven by individual circumstances. There are slow, sweeping changes, but nothing that can't be caught with careful annual assessment of the numbers. Insurance companies don't carry anything like the same level of assets on their books as banks, because they've never needed to and nobody's ever made them. Now they're going to see a spectacular, shocking systemic healthcare crisis, and the assets they hold to fund their suddenly exploding liabilities are going down the toilet along with the rest of the stock and bond markets.

I do not know how it is outside Europe, but pandemic and mortality shocks are taken into account in the determination of the capital European insurance companies have to hold.

https://www.actuaries.org.uk/system/files/field/document/IandF_SA2_SolvencyII_2016.pdf

[expatartist]

In Hong Kong we've hunkered down during the first wave of infections and are now going deeper inside our shells and tiny apartments as the second hits us. This isn't going away soon, and the effects will linger.

I don't think much will change. People said 9/11 would change the world forever.

The people of Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan may feel differently.

+1

I'm from but have lived outside the US mostly since the late 90s. The US response to 9/11 began to fatally weaken our international credibility. 2008 illustrated our financial leadership was untrustworthy. The 2016 election showed that enough of us were were greedy, racist idiots that our 'democratic system', excuse for numerous conflicts begun elsewhere, is unreliable.

Our delayed response to this inevitable pandemic will hamstring the US for a generation, domestically and internationally.

Also, this is a good read from MIT. Life will not "go back to normal" in a couple of weeks or months https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615370/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing-18-months/

[runbikerun]

I do not know how it is outside Europe, but pandemic and mortality shocks are taken into account in the determination of the capital European insurance companies have to hold.

https://www.actuaries.org.uk/system/files/field/document/IandF_SA2_SolvencyII_2016.pdf

This is somewhat reassuring. I assume the references to tier one/two/three capital are at least broadly equivalent to the same headings in banking regulation.

Now we get to see who did their risk modelling properly, and who did their risk modelling to get the regulators off their backs. That 99.5% confidence interval makes me think there will be at least a couple of insurers who put this type of scenario at a less than one in 200 probability.

[AnnaGrowsAMustache]

I think there's been a trend towards a simpler mode of living for years now - grow your own, tiny houses, self sufficiency, sustainability, buying loca etc. I think this is going to now dominate everything mainstream as people realise that total dependence on others for the basics (food, power, shelter) is not a good feeling. And can bite you in the arse in times of crisis. I think a whole lot of people are going to reassess the value of their shoe collection!

I also think the arts and crafts hobby stores are going to explode. People will learn new stuff while locked down and get into it when they're let out.

I think travel in the way we've been doing it has had it's day. People will still explore the planet, but international trips will be a big deal - and probably much more expensive. The idea of crowding as many people as possible into a tin tube will be gone. And border protections will be far tighter.

Theaters are done. No one is going to sit next to strangers and their viruses for hours now. I expect a lot of entertainment will now happen in much smaller groups - concerts, plays, restaurant dining etc