I am keeping an eye on digital passports that may be needed to go grocery shopping, or just go to the park. It's plausible that you will be required to carry your phone, or some kind of digital ID device to check into these places.
We are already hearing about immunity passports. I don't want to sound like a nut case, but I can see that once we have this sort of thing as commonplace to deal with Covid it will be expanded and never withdrawn. The phrase "the new normal" is starting to pop up, and I find that terrifying. I am already mourning the life we enjoyed just months ago.
This is exactly correct, and half of the population (at least in America) is sitting here and begging the government to take away more of their freedom so they can feel safer.
There is zero doubt in my mind life will never, ever be the same again. We've seen this by example of 9/11. That was one tragic day and daily life changed forever.
So many people are looking forward to getting out of lockdown and resuming their lives. I don't think those lives exist any more, and they will not return to us. Whatever is on the other side of this isn't what we had before.
Well, after the last war, many countries had conscription to bolster their armies and to have resources better prepared if there was one again.
So I would not be supprised and indeed would welcome countries doing Medical conscription and if you raise up whole generations who have done even a few weeks of medical training and with that, raise the basic level of health and first aid knowledge. That alone would make things better, would reduce those needing to go to the doctor and in the UK with a free access public health service, you cut down on people attending A&E and Doctors with silly issues that would be 101 first aid and basic knowledge treatable or preventable.
But that is just one whole area.
Food packaging, will change and maybe not in a good way. Early on we saw coffee outlets refuse to use reusable cups for fears of contamination. We have gone from the verge of lambasting individual fruits wrapped in plastic towards one that demands it almost.
Be so many ways things will change, directly and more so indirectly.
But not all bad, many people got to talk to neibours they never met, via windows a sense of community and shared issues and cohesion will be much better after this.
Though high-streets already suffering from online advantages, may well of seen the killer blow from this.
Also business wise, it will see many rethink business models and how they operate. Some will diversify, some change direction, some fold and new ones will spring out.
Back in the 70's in the UK we had milk delivered daily in glass bottles via electric vehicles. Over time that died out and plastic bottles from supermarkets being the main.
We may well see a return of such services and certainly for daily consumables like milk, fruit veg, bread. We will see an increase in companies offering that now as the demand and mentality for that demand after this all, will still be there.
Biggest one though, will be more companies open to flexible hours and working from home, which is great.
Well, like I said we will more than likely have some kind of bio passport. Initially it will be to validate immunity but under the threat of more pandemics (general stance is certainly going to be 'this can never happen again') I can see how this will become a normal thing. Certainly won't be able to fly without some kind of added bio security.
New vaccinations may become legally mandated. I can see a big backlash on this, but people will socially shame others into complying with the new norm. I mean, the anti-vax movement has ruined anyone's ability to even attempt to challenge vaccinations. This is worrying because there can be legit dialogs that need to be had around any new medication that is rushed to market. History has shown that vaccines can give cause for concern[1].
Then there is the drive for nationalism. Nations will want to secure their supply chains which could lead to tightening of borders in many different ways.
Cash could disappear. Already it's being argued as being a vector for transmitting viruses. Many stores will not accept cash at the moment.
I don't know, I am sure I could go deep down the rabbit hole on this one. I obviously don't know how this is going to play out and it likely won't be as overtly dystopic as my imagination might lead me to think. However I do think once the dust has settled all the subtle changes will leave us a little shocked about how much we lost.
I predict things will largely look the same as they did before within 1-2 years; at least in America. Hard to predict what'll happen in other countries.
There will probably be small changes (less handshaking, more acceptance of wearing masks when sick with anything, remote work somewhat more popular), but I don't think this is going to change American society in the way people think it will. Maybe healthcare reform and UBI will come sooner than they otherwise would've, but they're still far away.
>That was one tragic day and daily life changed forever.
I just disagree with this statement. After 9/11, flying got to be more of a pain in the ass, but for the other 99.9% of life, nothing really changed. More flags outside peoples' houses, maybe.
But what changed, appreciably for you? Because my life didn't really change, nor did anyone around me, from what I can tell.
The threat of terrorism changed politics forever[1]. The bar for military intervention was lowered significantly. The Patriot Act in the US by itself changed global life. Privacy diminished under the guise of keeping everyone safe. Airport security theatre is just a small visible part, but the attitude change toward monitoring the public is the most significant change. In the UK and the US[2] the number of CCTV cameras ballooned since 2001. We take surveillance for granted now, I guess you don't really think about that though.
Yip, that may well become a thing and as we know, that could play out in many ways. How do you make sure people carry them. We happily allow our beloved pets to be chipped with tracking RFID chips. We freely already carry around our own personal RFID bank cards and mobile phones that with each advancement in radio tech alone allows better tracking from the radio aspect alone, let alone all the other smart features built into the radio/chipset.
Thing is we take those around with us with a choice, any immunity passports, would the same level of choice play out.
You can get 100 people, give them the choice to carry tracking and 99 of them will be happy to do that, yet if you told those 100 people they had to, well - there would be way less than 99 who would happily comply and that is when things get messy.
Hence many and much enforcement of lockdowns have been overall, softy softly. In the UK we had a soft lockdown for about a week and the results was not as good, so a more formalised lockdown transpired. Still, mostly softly softly of move along, move along now. But still, it only takes a few to ignore things for the line to be moved further for all.
So whatever is needed or done, will be a fine balance in PR with the people and would need clear, precise reasons and durations and full intent outlined. Hence most will be pushed as a choice and if you are offing people some extra level of freedom back during lockdowns, then those that take up even voluntarily will PR wise, work well. Also won't be the ones that you would want to track anyhow in most cases. Though if enough go for it, you start to get a sense of mandate to make it more formalised knowing that the majority have already signed up freely. That is when things may well get interesting concerns.
In the long run political problems require political solutions. If you come up with a technical solution and said solution is adopted widely enough to matter the laws will be changed to render that technical solution irrelevant or illegal (not necessarily directly).
For example, the fact that you could make your own alcohol in all sorts of ways and that regular people had easy enough access to alcohol didn't render prohibition irrelevant. Organized crime ran rampant and federal law enforcement ran rampant after them until enough people agreed "yeah this is stupid, let's just make booze legal again" for there to be political will to repeal prohibition.
We are already hearing about immunity passports. I don't want to sound like a nut case, but I can see that once we have this sort of thing as commonplace to deal with Covid it will be expanded and never withdrawn. The phrase "the new normal" is starting to pop up, and I find that terrifying. I am already mourning the life we enjoyed just months ago.