In the short term, marriage rate will plummet, divorce rate will soar. Dating will be impacted even further by making people even more reluctant to go out with strangers, get intimate, etc.
Commercial office space will continue becoming less desired. Business are getting a look at just how much an office matters, how productive workers can be remotely, and they’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.
Similarly retail gets a full look at how online sales do if there’s no store alternative. Maybe sales weren’t impacted all that much and further hasten the crumbling of retail.
This all probably means that being a landlord might not be a very good business and that unless you’re an owner of apartment buildings, other real estate holdings may be more of a noose around your neck than anything else.
Food and delivery industry probably makes it mandatory to use gloves, wear masks in the kitchen, etc. It’ll be a tough sell to convince people to return to restaurants and so they’ll have to offer these precautionary measures and then won’t be able to roll them back. Also restaurants will only be able to fill up 50% of their capacity because they’ll need to remove half their tables.
A lot of businesses probably don’t come back once this is over. Bankruptcies rise. Businesses don’t hire back everyone they had pre-virus. Crime probably goes up. Mental health of the general population is severely affected so psychiatrists likely do great business after this.
Not sure what happens with live sporting events. People can’t go from being afraid to breathe outside to again being packed in with 20,000 other potential walking carriers. Masks required in large crowds then, for sports, concerts, events, theatres?
I think the events industry gets hammered. No one will give a shit to go to boring business conferences and fly to some other place to get there. The end of large weddings, at least for some time?
Uninviting touching becomes a major no no. Shaking hands gone. Hugs after personal meetings like dinner with friends gone. Touching the arm or shoulder of a co worker to get their attention, especially between the sexes, not going to be appreciated. Mandatory stay at home policies for sick workers.
Online everything. Internet up, internet meetings up, food deliveries, etc. Basically everything people are getting accustomed to or turned into routine during this period, likely remain as their go to.
Of course there will be people who are exceptions to everything, but this is the general direction of the masses, I think. I also believe ingenuity will be on the rise and a slew of new companies that help shape the new world are born out of this. Would love to be able to figure out who the next Amazon and Google are going to be.
Oh and even further economic disparity that no one is going to address. Forget basic income and all that jazz, not when trillions have been printed in an effort to keep people where they were. The government will for sure prop up the masses to the extent unemployment is unacceptably high for a while after this, but it will all be temporary. I could envision more socialized health and a larger role of government in the privatized health industry.
The Chinese virus was a doozy.
