Most of us would agree that life will be different in some regards after the crisis has passed.
Some winners which I predict: science and research. We have found out that we ignore it to our peril, and that government funding of it, at least as regards some of it, is necessary. Perhaps we will see a renaissance of learning about virology, epidemiology, and medicine.
Touching upon this, another winner will be the environment, at least in the short term. Because viruses and epidemics are tied into environmental issues. So far we have seen clearer air and water, and hopefully a reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Whether that will continue in our recovery is dependent on the decisions which will be made, as far as renewable energy, and habitat and rain forest protection.
A loser, unfortunately, will be the economy. I see no way to avoid that, it's already happening. Will there be a bounce-back effect after things resume? Time will tell.
A related loser will be globalism. At the least it will be done differently. Nations may decide that supply chain issues, at least of vital commodities, can't be left totally to the marketplace, They will want to ensure that things such as medicines and protective equipment, and to a degree, food, aren't dependent on foreign governments and trans-oceanic shipping.
A winner: government. I think this has demonstrated that a government "small enough to drown in a bathtub" isn't adequate to the tasks demanded of it. The next administration (which hopefully is a different one than we have now) will be tasked with rebuilding a strong civil service sector. Some departments which the Trump administration discarded, such as the one dealing with contagious diseases, will need to be restored. Positions will need to be filled in the departments which only have "acting" heads, or no heads.
Changes in businesses, workplaces, and education: This will be both an opportunity and a peril. Since the ever increasing costs of traditional college are not sustainable, we will see more online classes, which is already happening to a degree. More attention to the needs of students who won't be going to traditional college will hopefully be forthcoming. There will also be opportunities for secondary students to access classes which aren't available in their physical high schools. The peril is in the elementary grades. We have seen that homeschooling is possible and even preferable for a lot of students. Some families will do a combination of home learning and formal school. But since the elementary years are so foundational for the skills they will need to succeed in higher education, elementary schools will still need to be fully supported. Not to mention that both parents need to work in the majority of households, and children need a safe place to learn and be cared for. The temptation to say that education is the responsibility of the parents, and try to operate schools on the cheap, needs to be resisted.
Police departments say that reports of alleged child abuse are down 20-23%. Which sounds like good news. Until we consider that teachers are mandatory reporters, and that previously roughly 20-25% of alleged child abuse reports came from schools. The lower percentage doesn't mean that abuse and neglect are down that much. It just means that it isn't being reported.
Some things don't change. Crime hasn't taken a sabbatical, and criminals aren't "distancing". Police and first responders say it's business as usual in their line of work.
Another winner will be domestic food production. We have just had an object lesson that food is a basic need, which we take for granted until it isn't available. Which should be good for farmers, producers, and processors.
One thing we will have to do, now that we will have spent considerable time distancing and being apart, is to learn how to be together again.
Last but not least, what will change in our church and faith lives? Hopefully we will come back together with a renewed appreciation for the gifts and blessings of the Mass and sacraments. and also continue the family and personal prayer and meditation that we have been working on during the quarantine in order to stay spiritually focused.
These are just my personal glances into my "crystal ball".
Feel free to add you own predictions and musings.
I'm not sure that the government needs to be bigger. It just needs to work. Governors told Trump what they need--PPE, body bags, ventilators, adequate supplies of "comfort care" meds, meds for treating secondary infections, and tests, tests, tests--but he has ignored please for centralization and instead allowed Kushner to insert himself in there and try to enlist private enterprise to do online screening and parking lot testing. None of this has come to fruition in any major way.
ReplyDeleteWe need a centralized system. If there is any argument against the "let the market work" proponents, watching companies sell stuff to the highest bidder, not necessarily those in most peril or need, it's this disaster.
Trump has also created shortages of hydrochloroquine pretty much single-handedly. The boob. In my view, this is a case of gross negligence and public endangerment, and if no one is willing to put him in jail for it, then may God line his road to perdition with the bodies of people who suffered and died because of his militant incompetence.
I hope that the outbreak throws into high relief the ungodly devastation that occurs in nursing homes, on both patients and staff, in situations like these. A regular flu season in one of these places is bad enough. The Detroit Free Press reported that about a third of our C19 cases are in nursing homes. A friend's mother is dying alone in isolation in one of these places as I write this. It is just awful.
I think it should also be clearer to people how valuable sanitation workers, grocery store stockers and clerks, home delivery people, and the like are to keeping things going. We all have a much different idea about "essential workers," and I hope this translates in an uptick in union formation to get these people a decent wage.
I hope there are some lessons learned about social distancing and tracking, though without the testing statistics, this is going to be difficult to measure. China now believes that moving the sick to temporary hospitals, and not shutting people up with infected family members, would have stopped the spread of the disease. Lord, they figured out pest houses were preferable to enforced quarantine in the London plague of 1665. You'd think we would learn ...
Schools? They're already going to hell in a handbasket, when local school boards figure out how much money they can save putting everyone on line, it will be up to parents to push back as much as they can on that. But it's an uphill battle.
To your point about nursing homes, one particularly cynical line of thought is that deaths from COVID 19 in nursing homes shouldn't be counted, because "these people were going to die of something anyway". To carry that to its logical conclusion, why count any deaths of the virus, since we're all going to die someday. It's just hurrying up the process.
DeleteAgain, not to belabor the parallels, but there were medical assistants impressed as coroners during the London plague. They kept stats on who died and recoveres, which parishes were most affected, and when. This have them info to see which infection prevention measures might be effective and to track the length and spread patterns of the plague and it's recovery rate.
DeleteIt was crude by today's standards, but the physicians had full cooperation of the city authorities, and they did learn some things. We have nothing like the widespread testing--even if it was just observational--that was instituted 400 years ago.
Because we have a heartless incompetent as our president.
Fascinating about the things learned during the plague outbreaks of medieval and renaissance times. Interesting, too that the death statistics were different with the different forms it took. The bubonic form was 30-75%. The pneumonic killed 90-95%, and the septicemic nearly 100%.
DeleteUnder the category of people saying really dumb things, I read someone who said that the black plague stopped eventually, and they didn't have a vaccine. I guess that's true, after it killed 30-60% of Europe. And in fact plague still exists today, we just have means to treat it.
There will always be some people with more immunity. The question is how much we want to give up to reduce the death rates of our fellow citizens. Incidents in our state parks and yesterday's rally in Lansing against Gov. Gretchen's stay-home order indicates "not much." It'll be Michigan for Trump this fall, I'm sure.
DeleteThe right wing koolaid drinkers are losing it. I had to hide someone's Facebook feed today because reading the cognitive dissonance was too painful. They've decided that the figures about infection and death rates are lies made up by the media and the Democrats to crash the economy on purpose and make Trump lose the election. No, they're not going to give up anything for other citizens. They're apparently not even willing to do it for their own family for any length of time. They're like flat-earthers.
DeleteYeah, I asked my brother not to send me any more memes about how this is all just media hysteria and lies to "sell newspapers." Some people just can't face reality.
DeleteSheriffs in four Up North counties here are saying they refuse to enforce the governor's emergency orders because it violates their oath to uphold the the constitution. She is also being sued for illegal "taking."
https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/04/4-northern-michigan-sheriffs-wont-strictly-enforce-whitmers-vague-framework-of-emergency-laws.html
https://www.mlive.com/coronavirus/2020/04/whitmer-sued-by-residents-landscaping-business-over-stay-at-home-order.html
It's going to hit the fan after April 30, when her emergency order expires and she needs legislative action to continue it. That's the beginning of seasonal businesses here in the state, and the term-limited numbskulls in the GOP-led legislature are going to get us all killed. But, hey, the Tru-Green people will be able to poison a few lawns first!
And what's up with this? Sounds like there's some unhinged people out there.
DeleteYup, and they all live within a 50-mile radius of my house, I think. They were running around the capitol steps with guns and no masks. The state cops were doing nothing to enforce social distancing, possibly in hopes that they would a) let off some steam and calm down and b) infect each other and reduce the problem population.
DeleteThe Boy lives down by the capitol and said that it was pretty rowdy.
Katherine- so many topics, so little space! Here are some "quick hit" views from me on some of the categories you mention:
ReplyDeleteEnvironment and environmental health: most of the gains we're seeing now are temporary and will disappear once the economy starts growing again. As I've mentioned previously, I believe there will be less, perhaps considerably less, commuting to and from jobs as both employers and employees discover that they can be equally (or more) productive working from home. So air pollution may recede a little bit.
The economy - according to a number of experts whose views I've seen recently, it will not be a "V-shaped" recession; the economy will bounce back more slowly than it crashed. Part of the reason is that the virus will not be eradicated everywhere at once; different geographical areas (and perhaps different demographics) will bounce back, and perhaps crash again, at different times and different rates.
Globalism: I agree it will change. I don't agree that the importance of the global marketplace will diminish. But firms certainly have concluded already that they need to have more redundant, resilient supply chains - chains that, not to put too fine a point on it, are a good deal less reliant on China. China's loss may be a gain for other developing parts of the world, e.g. in Latin America and Eastern Europe, and perhaps some parts of Africa. I agree with you that it will also be a boost to domestic manufacturers, farmers and other producers of goods and services.
Government: I think it's a win for federalism and local politics. One thing I hope we've learned is that governors and states, and mayors and municipalities, have a critical role to play in our flourishing. Although having the boob in the White House is not the preferable way to learn this lesson, nevertheless we should draw the lesson that the federal government is necessary but not sufficient for a situation like the pandemic.
Education: I think it will largely revert back to what it was before. Regarding primary education, at least in this part of the country, teachers' unions are influential, and I expect that teachers don't want to distance-teach. As for college: I'd be heartbroken if the traditional college methods are deemed obsolete. That was one of the very best periods of my life. I want my children, and everyone else, to have a similar experience.
Churches: they'll be a loser. There will be pockets, probably within Evangelicalism, that will be savvy enough to capitalize on the new reality, but the Catholic church and the Protestant Main Line have said goodbye to a lot of members who won't be back.
Jim, I have good memories of my college experience, too, and I think our kids do as well. I don't think traditional college will go away. But I believe some things will have to change, loading people up with debt for decades isn't sustainable. And there has to be a path for kids who don't pursue a baccalaureate degree.
DeleteAbout churches losing people, aren't they going to be people who already said goodbye? The loss of the Eucharist feels almost like a physical pain, and I can't imagine when we are allowed to gather again that people who were there in the first place won't rejoice.
"About churches losing people, aren't they going to be people who already said goodbye?"
DeleteCertainly true for me. This hiatus has made me feel that just putting in an appearance just to make Raber happy is not doing God's work. I will be happy for him when things start up again. He really seems to be at loose ends.
One area which you didn't mention but which deserves consideration is foreign affairs. The president has amply demonstrated that he's monumentally incapable of generaling a massive, sustained effort that requires discipline, perseverance, courage and judgment. Putin, Xi, Khamenei et al surely have taken note.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you are right about that, Jim. Hopefully there will be some "discipline, courage, and judgement" in the next administration.
DeletePeter Navarro, who seems to be The Don's go-to guy for both economics and medicine, says the shortage of everything needed to fight the virus is due to the failure of previous administrations to "put America first" and prevent the development of global supply chains. Think of that: A Republican economist damning previous administrations for not interfering with free markets. And an economist promoting autarky. (In my day, autarky was to economics what flat earth theories were to geography.) Money is involved; globalism will continue apace.
ReplyDeleteOn the future of religion: Some of the fringe preachers probably will get themselves and their congregations killed defying safe hygiene, which should raise the national I.Q. But overall, I think religion in general will gain because people have been thinking about what we used to call the Last Things. The consensus of my men's group this morning was that disruption has been good for their spiritual lives. Personal impacts like that have a way of fading with time. But it is significant, I think, that our daily televised Mass is getting five or six times more hits than the real Mass had people in attendance. And the hits, as at our house, often indicate more than one viewer. So, given time and the ability to do it from home, a lot of people have chosen daily Mass attendance.
ReplyDeleteI also think/hope that it will stop, at least for awhile, being possible to low-ball nurses, EMs and other non-star surgeon medical professionals on salary. Just at this moment, I would trade two Dolphin starter for a barber if I could. That impulse won't last, but the better bargaining position of nurses et al should.
In this article Italian doctors treating coronavirus patients were given permission by their bishop to give Communion to the patients. A way to minister to their sould as well as tgeir bodies.
ReplyDeleteUgh, typos... "..minister to their souls as well as their bodies."
DeleteDisaster capitalism will be looking for opportunities while everyone else is disoriented. And who will stop them? This SCOTUS? This POTUS? This Senate? The American public bred and trained for apathy? Politicians have to tell the wonderful public they have what it takes to ultimately do the right thing. I don't. I think the American public is a dumbass.
ReplyDeleteTesting to see if my name is displaying.
ReplyDeleteStan
Ok. I'm back.
DeleteGlad you're back, Stanley
DeleteI'm going to add one more thing to the "loser" list: the wedding-zilla industry. Of course all wedding celebrations have been cancelled. But a lot of couples have decided to get married anyway, and just do it very basically. You can get married by a member of the clergy or a judge and two witnesses or immediate family. It's even possible to do a Catholic wedding that way, my paternal grandparents did in 1928. Starting out without blowing 5 figures may catch on as an appealing alternative. Low stress, and lots of privacy for a staycation honeymoon. You can always have a party later.
ReplyDeleteI was a ring bearer for my cousin Bill's wedding in 1956. It was the last family wedding which reception was held in a fire hall. Unfortunately, I left before the beer bottle throwing fight broke out. After that, things became fancy schmancy venues and lots of lacy paper doilies.
Delete"Starting out without blowing 5 figures may catch on"
DeleteIf only!
I say that partly out of self-interest, as I have two daughters and hope to have savings to retire on. But also as an impartial and dismayed observer of the insanity of the modern wedding. Nobody should go broke or go into debt to get married.
Haha, paper doilies. A friend's daughter arranged what I can only describe as two "costume changes" during her "destination wedding" ceremony in Utah. The dad, who abandoned the family when she was four, poured a lot of guilt money into that spectacle.
DeleteIf you think weddings will change, Katherine, what about funerals? We've already seen a but growing trend of "no services are planned." Will the people who are pretty much forced out of funerals now find that they didn't miss it? Or will people realize that there is something worthwhile in a gathering to say goodbye even if it's not religious?
"I was a ring bearer for my cousin Bill's wedding in 1956. It was the last family wedding which reception was held in a fire hall."
DeleteWhen I was a kid growing up in Michigan, the wedding receptions were held at the Knights of Columbus or VFW hall. The food was buffet style, the beer was cheap, and the whole families, including kids, were invited. I had wonderful times at them. Each one was a family reunion.
None of my kids has ever been to a wedding reception - none has ever been invited, and none of their own friends have gotten married yet (part of the sex drought, is my theory). And they're all basically adults now. And if they ever do go to receptions (if receptions ever are allowed again), they'll be the screwed-up receptions that people have these days.
Jean, you may well be right that funerals will recede in social/communal importance.
DeleteFWIW, in this diocese, as the churches are closed, the priests and others are doing graveside services with < 10 people present. Our local Catholic funeral home livestreams it. One of our former choir members recently died, and so we forwarded the livestream link to the choir members. I'd be curious to know how many would join that streamed event.
There were relatives in other areas of the country who couldn't attend my mother's funeral but wished they could. Live streaming would have been useful and maybe this will become an accessory in the future. I would like to see burial customs change for ecological reasons but I see the gathering of people to honor someone who has died as a good thing. And even include God in the gathering.
DeleteTwo pillars of the church, or their families, skipped the funeral Mass completely recently and before the shutdown. The assumption is "cost," but I don't get it and won't get it as long as I keep having to back out of parking spaces from between a Lincoln Navigator on one side and a Ford 450 on the other.
DeleteAbout funerals, they aren't "fun". But we do them for a reason. As Catholics we pray for the deceased, and also to console and be present for the bereaved. It would be easier just to blow them off. But even if a memorial Mass or service is delayed until later, it still has meaning. Loved ones don't just "get over it" and move on. They're still in mourning, and the sadness will come and go a lot during the time after a death. I think the funeral luncheon afterwards is important, too. It gives the family and friends a chance to be together, and let the church ladies take care of the work. I can remember that in my youth I was whining about being asked to help with a funeral dinner. My mom set me straight, saying that's something you just do and don't gripe, because it's a work of mercy and death comes to every family. She was right.
DeleteKatherine, every point is right on. (Including your mom's!)
DeleteKatherine, I like your mom's take! Something very St. Martha about it.
DeleteI find death rites really important. The form doesn't matter much to me. But I'm not sure how you can celebrate birth if you can't come together at a death to say that someone mattered--or that the bereaved matter. matter
I don't think it has to be a dragged out multi-day affair. I was very moved and appreciative of the old ladies who came to tell me what my mother had meant to them when they were all girls together.
Katherine, Your lesson in human solidarity is being widely missed and it surely isn't promoted by either the party of my own individual tribal racial resentments or their own individual tribal-religious resentments.
DeleteThere are a lot of lessons to be learned from this thing. One obvious thing is that our appetite for cheap meat has optimized the zoonotic transfer of diseases into the human population. Whether it's Chinese people eating pangolins or American companies confining animals in CAFOs, it is a portal for emerging disease. Perhaps less meat in the diet. Also, people who work with these animals need good health coverage and monitoring to detect these crossovers in a timely manner. But that would be the intelligent thing to do and this is America.
ReplyDeleteI would put in a good word for cattle ranchers. You can't raise cattle in confinement, not for long periods. They spend most of their lives grazing on pasture land, most of which is not arable, or only marginally so. They are ruminants, which means they turn the cellulose in grass or hay into protein. The case can be made that they don't need to be fed grain in feed lots, or at least not as long. Grass fed beef is healthier anyway. Full disclosure, my family of origin are cattle ranchers.
DeleteYes. There's a big difference between traditional ways of providing meat and these cow factories. I don't have any objections to the practices you describe. Full disclosure, I am known to eat hamburgers.
DeleteSomeone needs to watch these fish farms, which are the seafood equivalent of intensive livestock operations. There has been some pushback on these in the Great Lakes because of the pollution they cause. A local chef says she buys from the Native American tribes because it's fresh caught and fish aren't raised to be swimming in their own waste.
DeleteI feel lucky that we live in an area where we can buy farm-direct and drive past the operation. It is really expensive, which means our meat consumption is smaller but tastier.
Meat is extremely nutritious but I figure that means you don't need so much. Less but higher quality sounds like the way to go.
DeleteAs for the fish farms, wait until we get a virus from a fish swimming in it's own crap. That should be a doozie.
The native Hawaiians used to do some fish farming. I think they were pretty small operations, don't know if they avoided some of the problems of poor sanitation.
DeleteNow they have genetically engineered FrankenSalmon that grow really big in a third of the time. I guess so we can overeat more!
Delete"As for the fish farms, wait until we get a virus from a fish swimming in it's own crap." Holy smoke, Stanley, you have been conspiring with my wife.
DeleteAnother winner, communication with family and friends, especially by texting. Everyone is checking in on one another.
ReplyDeleteLoser? Shopping malls. Retail has been hit hard. The dept store sector has been hanging on by its nails for a while now, as have huge suburban shopping malls - both already severely damaged by online shopping. Suspect this will deal a death blow to some of the big names (Macy's?) and to the shopping mall, especially to the huge malls.
ReplyDeleteKatherine, our Oz son is pres. of a small ag-tech company for cattle and sheep ranchers. Virtually 100% of their beef and lamb is grass-fed, free range. And they are doing well even now. People still want to eat meat. The biggest markets for Australian beef/lamb are in Asia, especially China. So far no drop in demand. So your cattle ranch family and friends will probably be fine - or at least in no worse shape than they were before, unless the meat-packing industry closes due to the virus. Some companies (Smithfield for example) are closing because some workers have been diagnosed with covid-19.
Fish farms - we were in Oahu in Dec, on the north shore. On the drive from Honolulu to the north shore we passed dozens and dozens of shrimp (fish tacos, etc) take-out stands. I was surprised at first - until we also passed a whole lot of shrimp farms. Don't know what other seafood farming they are doing, but definitely shrimp farming. We did not order any shrimp dishes at the restaurants!
Ann, you are right about shopping malls hurting. Our governor recently gave one of them permission to reopen. I think that was unwise, especially since the others are still closed. Of course that will cause accusations of favoritism.
DeleteThe packing houses were tardy in instituting distancing and safe practices. Now that some of them had to close, they are finally catching up with what they should have done in the first place.
Yes I think the ranchers will be okay as long as they can get their cattle to market.