When there’s effective treatment and we can stop social distancing, what will the world look like?
As I write this in July 2020, we’ve had 4 months of ‘lockdown’ in England where all but the most essential shops have been closed, travelling by public transport has been almost completely discouraged, and all forms of hospitality and nightlife have been suspended, to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Whilst we’re emerging into another ‘temporary normal’, where we can do many of these things again but with social distancing, I wanted to look further into the future.
Let’s assume that the various studies into a vaccine and new treatments are successful in the near future (and this is by no means guaranteed). What will the world be like? And how will it differ from a pre-lockdown world that we enjoyed before March 2020?
I live in England, and so this will mostly focus on what I am most familiar with, but of course some of these ideas are transferable elsewhere.
The old/new normal
To clarify, I’m using the following terms in this piece:
- The ‘old’ normal is what we experienced before lockdown, i.e. before March 2020
- The ‘current’ or ‘temporary’ normal is what we’re in now, where we need to socially distance, work at home where possible and wear masks in some situations
- The ‘new’ normal will be when such restrictions are no longer necessary because the virus has been essentially eradicated from the population, or we can treat it effectively. Arguably, this is where New Zealand is, albeit with strict immigration controls to prevent the virus being re-imported.
Travel
When lockdown began in England, we were told:
- Don’t leave your home for more than an hour, and only go out for essential journeys or for exercise
- Avoid public transport unless it is your only option
Over time, this messaging has eased as active Covid-19 cases have fallen. As I write this in July, the public are now being encouraged back onto public transport, albeit with mandatory face masks and needing to sit at least a metre apart, preferably two metres. This may have something to do with the millions of pounds that the government has had to spend over the past few months to prop up Britain’s transport companies so that they can run a minimum service for key workers. But also, as more people return to work, there’s a risk of major congestion on the roads if everyone who can drive decides to, rather than taking a train or a bus.
I suspect it will be several years before the usage levels of public transport return to pre-lockdown levels. People will remain wary of using public transport – especially in places where buses and trains are often full and standing, like London. I also think more people will carry on working at home, and more meetings will take place virtually – points which I will cover in more detail later. So fewer people will need to commute to work every day, and there will be less of a need for long distance and international business travel.
Face masks
At the start of lockdown, the scientific evidence behind the effectiveness of mask-wearing to prevent infections seemed unclear. In many cases, recommendations were made that the public not wear masks, as doing so improperly would be ineffective and may give a false sense of protection.
But the advice evolved, and soon face masks became mandatory on public transport in England. Later in July, it’ll also become mandatory to wear a face covering in shops, or risk a financial penalty. Having a mask on means that the advice to keep two metres apart from anyone outside of your household can be relaxed to one metre, without substantially increasing the risk of infection – provided that everyone complies, of course.
In future, even when not mandatory to do so, I can see it being more socially acceptable to wear face masks in public. Prior to 2020, people in some far eastern countries would wear masks in public, to avoid catching airborne diseases or spreading their own minor infections. I would expect this to be more common in western cultures as well – especially amongst those who have invested in reusable cloth masks. It would be interesting to see if, long term, this would have an effect on reducing transmission rates of infectious diseases.
Working at home
Like many people, back in March I was sent to work from home for the foreseeable future. This wasn’t something that employees of the organisation I worked for often got to do in the past – whilst the option was there, there was the expectation that you would be less productive and doing so was generally the exception.
Once we were forced to do so, it turned out that, for many of us, we could be just as productive at home. I’m fortunate that the organisation had invested in IT systems that allowed off-site access to many of our services and platforms, so we could do the vast majority of our work at home and retain access to telephony and database systems remotely.
Office workers can begin to return to on-site work from August in England and I expect some will be keen to get at least some of their employees back in the office as soon as possible. But some big organisations like Twitter have already decided that, even when the situation improves, employees can continue to work remotely indefinitely. Companies like Automattic and AgileBits had, prior to 2020, embraced remote work, but many others were reluctant to do so until forced to, and will now be changing their attitudes.
I expect more companies will include the availability of remote work in their job adverts, and this could have a knock-on effect on where people choose to live. If you no longer need to commute to central London to work, then theoretically you can live anywhere with a good internet connection. That could have a noticeable effect on commuting into London, and demand for property. That being said, if people start living further away from work, then it’s important that mid-distance travel remains available, and therefore we will still need schemes like HS2 which will enable more capacity for such journeys.
My personal preference would be for a mixed mode – say, three days a week in the office and two at home, with the flexibility to adjust this based on the need to attend meetings, or be home to look after ill children, receive deliveries or have work done in the house. I used to work extra hours to bank up flexi-time to take as and when our four-year-old was ill; in future, I may be able to work from home instead, and not feel like I constantly had to take shorter lunch breaks. And hopefully the days of booking a whole day off work for a plumber who turns up at 16:55 will be over, as I would be able to work from home during the day.
Online meetings
Whilst videoconferencing technologies have been around in some shape or form for years, they reached a point of maturity just at the right time. I had only heard of Zoom last year – and now everyone uses it. Back in October, myself and a colleague went to a meeting with a client in Coventry, which involved booking a hire car and travelling over five hours there and back. The meeting took all of a couple of hours, with lunch – and really, there was nothing that couldn’t have been done over a video call.
I strongly suspect such meetings are a thing of the past – a two hour Zoom call would’ve been a lot cheaper and had less of an impact on the day. For some of the meetings I attend, I’m only needed for parts of it – being online, I can carry on working whilst listening in and then contributing when needed.
I think this will have an impact on the demand for international travel – I’ve heard stories of creatives who have flown to Los Angeles literally just for a two hour meeting. I can’t see those being common in the new normal.
Decline in air travel
Air travel is pretty bad for the environment, and even before lockdown some people were vowing to cut down their use of planes. Sleeper trains, which were at risk of being completely eradicated across Europe, were starting to launch new routes or re-established services that had been cancelled.
There will be a fall in international business travel, as online meetings are seen as a suitable alternative. And I expect some airlines will simply go bust, along with some smaller airports. I would be very surprised if the controversial third runway at Heathrow Airport ever gets built now. High speed rail will hopefully attract more people away for the journeys that remain necessary – especially if they can offer good quality internet connections during the journey.
The importance of good internet
One policy of the Labour Party in the run-up to the General Election in 2019 was of universal broadband provision – and internet access being treated as an essential utility along with water and electricity. It was laughed off by some at the time, and yet the only way that many companies have been able to continue business over the past few months is because their employees have had good internet connections at home. Every property in the UK should be able to access some kind of broadband internet connection; ideally, we would have fibre connections rolled out to every home and office, but there is a role for mobile internet services as well. 5G connections will help where a fixed line connection isn’t possible or practical.
I’ve been fortunate that, despite us only having an ADSL line, it’s enough bandwidth for streaming Netflix (for our ten-year-old), a video call and access to work systems at the same time. For families struggling with just one pre-pay mobile handset between several kids, the last few months must have been very hard.
When it comes to buying or renting property, those buildings with poor internet access are not going to be able to command such a high price in future.
Patience and planning
This is something less tangible, but we’ve had to get used to waiting for things and planning ahead as lockdown has eased. We’ve had to queue for shops, so that they can manage the numbers of people inside and maintain social distancing. Similarly, for days out, many places have moved to pre-booking only. There aren’t many places that you can go to on a whim anymore; and popular attractions tend to be booked up weeks in advance.
The decline of cash
So far this year, I think I have withdrawn cash from an ATM approximately three times. The shift to purchasing goods online and shops preferring customers to use contactless forms of payment means that I just haven’t needed to have coins and notes available to pay for goods, most of the time. There will always be a need for cash but I wouldn’t be surprised if more shops and venues become card-only.
The rise of online learning
Schools and universities had to very quickly adapt to a model where students could not physically be on campus. Some universities have begun to offer some programmes by distance learning, but for most courses there was an expectation that you will take at least a year out to study full-time for a qualification. In future, I expect more universities to offer completely online programmes, including online tests, or adopt a more blended approach where students are not required to be on campus as much. Many people will have lost their jobs as a result of the economic crash; offering flexible and online degree courses will be one way that universities can encourage people to up-skill whilst they wait for the job market to improve. Similarly, international students will be less willing, or indeed able to travel across the world to study, so offering courses that they can take in their own countries would replace the lost income from international students.
These online courses need to be proper courses, with assessments – whilst MOOCs (massively open online courses) have been popular, they are not a replacement for a full degree.
Takeaway delivery and online shops
Faced with being unable to open for weeks and months, restaurants and shops pivoted to online sales, and delivering takeaways. Many restaurants near us that had never offered takeaways, never mind deliveries, suddenly started appearing on services like Just Eat and Deliveroo. Whilst these places can now re-open, I expect that many will carry on offering food for delivery, and shops will continue to sell online where they perhaps wouldn’t before. Of course, this may have a knock-0n effect on footfall on high streets and in shopping centres – and with one of Britain’s largest shopping centre owners going into administration, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one closes down in the coming years.
These are some of the things that I think will change, when compared to the ‘normal’ that we knew before March 2020. I’m mostly writing this down as a way of recording what we accepted for normal now, and what I hope or expect will come about. I may be completely wrong and things will largely go back to how they were, but for many, ‘how things were’ wasn’t ideal. The Covid-19 crisis has been awful for everyone – I lost a friend and former colleague to the disease – but it’s also an opportunity for society to reset, and challenge the norms and expectations that we had before the crisis. I hope that, once we’re in the ‘new’ normal, we’ll be able to embrace technology for remote and flexible work and study, be more patient and understanding, and stop doing the things that are destroying our planet. We’ll see what happens.
This was originally posted on Medium.
