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Coronavirus is going to bring with it some permanent changes to the way we live. What might some of these be? THREAD of my guesses in no particular order:
1. Cash will never recover from this. In the short term, the maximum amount for contactless payments will be abolished, but our retreat into our homes and preference for contact-free money means that cash will be on its way out very quickly.
2. Nobody will travel for meetings any more. Those days of taking an intercity train just for a single meeting will be gone. Zoom works and now everybody knows it.
3. I don't know if copyright will recover. So many TV stations, libraries, journals etc have opened up their archives for free - boxsets streamed legally with no money changing hands - the Bar Ilan Responsa Database with no charge - will we ever go back?
4. The distinction between doctors and nurses will begin to shrink. We might see more doctors doing a nurse-like role, or nurses doing a doctor-like role. The view that doctor > nurse, which was always daft and unfair and sexist, will finally die.
5. Our conception of which workers are essential will change very quickly. Priti Patel's list of which professions should be given enhanced immigration status is only a few weeks old, really, but it now looks very silly. Wot no Deliveroo drivers?
6. A four day week? Now we know quite how many meetings are unnecessary and how easy home working can, potentially, be, will the standard employment pattern over the coming decades be a four-day workweek?
7. Less of a generation gap. As the grandparent-generation is being bought iPads and more and more of them are rapidly learning about technology and the internet, will the stereotype that they're more out-of-touch and conservative hold water in future?
8. A new paradigm for consumer rights, with refunds for cancelled flights, trains, concerts etc coming more readily and with fewer conditions or hurdles.
^^ That's it for now, but I might add if more things come to me.
10. Oh wait, how could I forget the Great Kosher-for-Pesach Racket? That's never going to recover next year.
11. And the high street of course. The high street may have died a death.
