Corona crisis. Is it going to change the way we live?

In the United States of America?

Ummm, no.

This will end, we will go back to our lives.
People will quickly forget this time.

We will be in a recession, possibly worse than 2008-...

Biden will win in November.
I expect a "blue tsunami" in the Congress, as well.

In 2022, the Republicans will blame Biden for the recession and deficit.
There will be a major push to "flip" the House back to the Republicans.
They will likely succeed.

Rinse, spin, repeat.

We are f*cked, short term and long term.

 

I can tell you it's likely to result in six pissed-off grandparents that they can't see Baby Brummie face-to-face until Christmas 2021.

 

6? 2 throuples or 1 4 way?

 

One set got divorced and then each married someone else. Four biological grandparents, two step-grandparents.

 

Phew.

 

One possibility: an age of dispersion, wherein fewer people live in densely populated metro areas

https://quillette.com/2020/03/25/the-coming-age-of-dispersion/

Once held up as a grand ideal, the megacity is increasingly losing its appeal as a way of life. Chinese science fiction writers—increasingly the last redoubt of independent thought in that increasingly totalitarian country—envision an urban future that is, for most, squalid and divided by class. There are already deep divisions between those who hold urban residence permits, hukou, and those relegated to an inferior, unprotected status. Hao Jingfang’s novella, Folding Beijing, for example, portrays a megacity sharply divided between the elite, the middle ranks, and a vast underclass living mainly by recycling the waste generated from the city.3

During my last visit to Beijing, Communist Party officials shared their concerns about how these divides could undermine social stability. They have already essentially banned new migration into cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and encourage migrants to move to the less crowded interior or even back to rural villages. Given the dictatorial nature of the regime, it’s not shocking that growth is already shifting to “second tier cities” including some in the interior. In far more chaotic India, the Modi government also supports an ongoing shift to smaller cities, and even a push for revitalization of rural villages. This reflects a growing concern among Indian researchers that the much ballyhooed “shining India,” concentrated in large urban centers, increasingly resembles the orbiting world portrayed in the science fiction movie Elysium—hermetically sealed from the vast majority of the population.

Even without government assistance, and often in the face of opposition from planners, dispersion has continued to characterize Western cities. This pattern is well-established throughout Europe, Canada, and Australia and is particularly evident in the United States where, since 2010, nearly all population growth has occurred in the urban periphery and smaller cities. As a new study from Heartland Forward demonstrates, both immigrants and millennials—the key groups behind urban growth—are increasingly moving to interior cities and even small towns. This is true even in San Francisco where nearly half of millennialsdescribed themselves as “likely” to leave the City by the Bay, a dramatic shift from a decade earlier, due in large part to insanely high housing prices and deteriorating conditions on the streets.​

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Hard to tell if this is a trend or a blip, but if major US cities are seriously disrupted by Covid19 and outlying areas are not, it might be a trend. Of course, one feature of American life the article doesn't seem to account for is that the delivery of health care is a widespread problem, and the lack of prepartion for a pandemic is, in this country, universal.

 

I think telework will increase. Employers will find that productivity doesn't drop off, and they will enjoy saving the rent on office space.

I wonder if people will discover that they can survive without sports, on TV or live? It does seem to use up a lot of mental bandwidth that can be used for other things.

I think many people will continue to wash their hands a lot.

Assuming a vaccine is developed, I think things will mostly get back to the way the were. There will be more emphasis on preparing for a pandemic, until some shithead president decides it's a waste of money.

 

I find Masterpiece Theater a fine substitute for sports! Hardly miss it at all. I'll be OK (sees baseball opening day would've been tomorrow)...just give me a minute to collect myself.

 

Sports are Yuge money making machines. They will be back long before the other 543 offbeat programs.

 

Well, we'll see what happens when people are working from home and March Madness is actually proceeding.

 

March madness is what, 4 work days? The World Cup, on the other hand...

 

Oh, to be sure. But each of those days are about as productive as December 25th typically is.

 

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OK, but if millennials move out, housing prices will come down.

They really aren't. I can't remember the exact factoid, but I think it's something like, the average Prem team has the same annual revenue as an average grocery store.

 

Ummm, no. Everton had 190 million pounds of revenue a couple of years back.. The average supermarket per a google search does $14 million of annual business.

Sports teams don't have big revenues by corporate standards. Kraft Heinz did $26 billion last year, for example. But bigger than your local Safeway, or whatever it is you guys have out there. Whole Foods.

 

On the criminal justice front, perhaps we will see increased use of home detention.

 

So Mumbai?



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Sounds like that Yogi Berra saying, 'nobody goes there anymore, is too crowded'.

 

Will the Combovervirus change the way we live?
Yes. It already has.

 

Let's start with a simple example near and dear to this discussion board: will the virus have a lasting impact on public entertainments viewed by large, dense crowds? Will some portion of the fans in the stands for sports (or concerts and other performances) become more reluctant ticket-buyers, to avoid sitting close to thousands of other people, for a long time? Will this pandemic bankrupt and end the life of some clubs or artistic companies in ways that they aren't simply replaced by others when this disease is conquered by a vaccine or simply fades away? I don't have any snappy answers and would like to hear anyone with a convincing insight.
One thing I do fear is that the entertainments popular with young people, such as spectator sports, (who will quickly regain their illusion of immortality when this is over) will not be permanently affected, but arts organizations like opera, ballet and symphony companies with typically older fans will take a real, permanent hit from patrons who get scared off and don't come back.

 

I think the long term effect will be dependent on how it plays out.

We heard from our officials in Ohio today say they expect the peak of the diagnosed cases to be around May 1 and the number of cases could reach 6000 per day at that time. Depending on the fatality rate for those infected, that could be a huge number that die from it and would likely reduce anyone's interest in mass gatherings for a long time.

However, even if the diagnosed cases reach that 6000 per day number but the mortality rate is comparable to the regular flu, the effect might not even last into next fall.

There is quite a bit riding on the next month to 6 weeks.