I know it’s very early, but it is increasingly clear that we will see a very positive long term impact amid the loss of a few loved ones, and it is helpful to have a long term vision going into the future that takes advantage of new opportunities.
Assuming this lasts as long as the experts say – up to seven months, through, say, September, with a lay low period for a while after.
How will this change us?
Where will we be in a few years?
What good will come of all this?
What long-lasting major changes will there be in our lives, in every possible area – everyday living, culturally, economically, socially, politically, everywhere?
What obscure thing now will become a big thing, and vice-versa?
What will be dead forever, and what will bloom?
The Short Term
1. Fauci is probably out. That is not really a surprise, as it has always been a revolving door. This has implications.
2. Texas Lt Governor Dan Patrick asking old people to take one for the team. As it was on Fox, Trump definitely saw this. And soon after, Dennis Prager and Glenn Beck soon backed him up.
Here is where my predictions start.
3. Social distancing will probably be lifted in ~10 days, even as infection rates skyrocket.
4. More blue state people, and work at home white collars, will stay home. Red staters and blue collars will go out and spread it more amongst themselves. And hospitals aren’t ready.
5. Dow will limp back a little, which is great. But I doubt the Dow will surpass Obama levels anytime soon, because…
6. Cases will go from “rising” to “skyrocketing”, which is really bad. The cumulative effect of a half million dead will drain the economy.
It really boils down to this. The value of human lives.
When do you pull the plug on Grandma when you are behind on payments to your Mercedes?
Some math may help put it into perspective.
30% infection rate and 1% mortality = 480,000 dead.
This is the figure that Michael Osterholm has presented in his Joe Rogan interview, and US hospitals use now.
Insurance companies put a human life at $129,000. At 480,000 dead that is almost $62 billion in pure life cost alone.
And this does not count a greatly increased infection rate due to stopping social distancing. Which would easily double that.
Ultimately, I believe that the U.S. will have to see Civil War era death toll, with a whole generation of the elderly decimated, before waking up. That is 620,000 dead. $80 billion.
If you feel uncomfortable doing this math and see it as depressing and morbid, congratulations, this shows you are a decent human being.
April 2 Update: Fauci survived. And Trump finally took this seriously.
Regardless, the country will slouch towards bankruptcy, with each party competing to offer more incentives to the working classes. I see Biden winning, and angling for an Uncle Joe persona like FDR leading his people out of the Great Depression, possibly with “fireside chats.”
But for this, let’s forget 2020. It will be a chaotic shitshow and everyone knows that. Let’s look beyond that black box and try to intuit the contours and geometry of the following years.
The Long Term
The Zeitgeist
Revolutions come in generational cycles – 1840s Romantic revolutions in Europe, 1870s post Civil War, 1900s Trustbusting, 1930s New Deal, 1960s Hippies, 1990s Internet Cyberpunks, and the 2020s is coming right on time.
The Devil finds time for idle hands! All the free time people have will encourage protests, demonstrations, sit-ins, and riots.
And people will master a new form of protest: staying home. Expect artists to take a Woody Guthrie/John Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath role.
Lifestyle:
Hygiene will have a higher baseline.
The shaking of hands may go the way of the dodo if another pandemic hits while Corona is still petering out. Otherwise people might still fall back as ancient traditions are hard to break.
A minor form of remnant xenophobia might persist and linger for many years. But this is not your garden variety racist, anti-immigrant, or other forms of fear. It will be the fear and distrust that country people have for city people, in a manner that we have probably not seen for generations. You are seeing this all over, from rich New Yorkers retreating to Nantucket, and Parisians invading Brittany.
Even within their own country, first world urbanites are no longer welcome in vacation areas for obvious reasons, but also their tendency to immediately buy up all the supplies.
By the same token, Americans will be less welcome in other countries. The Coronavirus spread like wildfire through America, and Canada and Mexico were far behind. Disposable income can only get you so far. This will be punctuated by more people dying.
This will linger even after Corona is gone and, like shaking hands, may come back far harder if another epidemic hits soon after.
Telecommuting will be the norm. Employers will question the need for paying overhead in large offices.
DIY will become more prevalent than ever. More people will garden, work on their hobbies, craft their own beer, make their own bread, that kind of thing
With all this free time at home and many professionals with heretofore unavailable creative energy, we will see a mini explosion of computer created memes, art, music, websites, Youtubes, and all other assorted homemade content.
An ugly side effect to all the cabin fever will be divorces.
Less meat will be eaten and lab-grown alternatives will develop faster than they would have. Besides the obvious – Chinese wet markets, exotic game, and the extinction of many African species – pressure will grow to outright ban factory farming, from which disease can come, and meat might become more of an expensive delicacy.
With this new runderstanding, the Green Party may gain more traction (more on politics below)
Unprecedented levels of homelessness by otherwise normal non-drug addicted people will create yet more incentives for government to offer free housing.
Cultural:
Fashions in general will assume a very austere patina. Haute couture will have its hardest period ever.
Much music will be morose, or angry and punk will have a revival. “Realness” Every genre will go back to its roots stripped of artifice
New stereotypes will emerge.
“Hipster” will become so mainstream that the word will be redundant.
General rise in tribalism and parochialism especially in sports after people can attend again, but little racism and even less homophobia
Religion will continue its downward trend exacerbated by the death of so many elderly.
Stronger family ties and rise in monogamy
Games will take more market share from film, which will partially implode due to theater losses. VR will become much more widespread
Crime of all types will explode, there will be occasional riots and armed gangs but most of it will be cybercrime, ID theft, scams, ransomware
Economics
The Dow will go down to the four digits again and stay there for years.
The US will be amongst the hardest hit of all countries, due to obesity, general ignorance of science, and lack of preparedness. Will be the worst since the Great Depression. But after a year or two, it will recover faster than other countries due to flexibility.
Corporate debt is already at historic levels. Junk is common. Expect a massive implosion the likes we’ve never seen.
Bitcoin will grow.
30% peak unemployment, will rapidly go back down due to demographics. The 2020s was and is always the decade that Milennials will flex their financial muscles and buy things that young families buy.
About 40% of companies declare bankruptcy and will get bought out and restructured
Wealth Transfer:
Very large wealth transfer from old to young as many elderly die, and if one spouse dies, the other often soon follows. Probate courts will be extremely clogged. Expect a lot of new young rich, which will help bring the economy back with much frivolous spending. Events like music festivals and Burning Man will blossom.
Industries:
Choked supply chains create disruption putting a higher premium on agile industry.
Travel – hotels, airlines, the 3 cruise operators – will be cut in at least half
Big Oil will bust far harder than the 1980s or even ever before as solar and wind pick up speed.
Many of the huge retailers with goods unsuitable for ecommerce – Wal-mart and grocery chains – will live long and prosper.
These industries will almost completely die:
Old school stockbrokers, bookstores, newsstands, music studios, textiles, banks, printers, old telecom, HR, newspapers, non-digital advertising, developers, home builders.
The conference industry will have a massive shakeout. Probably most companies will shutter.
Companies:
FAANG’s outlook (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) will be mixed – Facebook will avoid being split up but will hurt a lot after new EU style privacy laws are passed, Amazon will be even more dominant than ever, Apple will greatly stumble, Netflix will be saved long term aside from short term debt load due to increased streaming, but will ultimately falter to all the other competitors especially Disney, who may joining FAANG (will it then be called D-FAANG?)
Google will prosper despite Stadia being a dud
ZOOM will leave a great taste in many people’s mouths.
Rupert Murdoch will finally die, moving Fox more to the middle, leaving OAN to fill in the far-right gap.
Local Businesses:
Ecommerce will drive half local stores out of business
Local retail will die on the vine if it doesn’t adapt.
Retail on its way out will die, e.g. Gamestop
Streaming will grow.
Property values everywhere will plummet.
Housing will be affordable again. Manhattan will be like it was in the 90s
Half local restaurants and retail will not recover. Office vacancies will skyrocket due to said implosion but also vastly increased telecommuting.
Many of these retail districts will stay empty for years, creating much urban blight.
The dollar might lose its fiat currency status, possibly to the Euro.
Tariffs will be eradicated in terms favorable to the Chinese.
Politics (US)
Half a million Americans die. You cannot have that many people lose their parents and not have major political turmoil and a changing of the guard at the next possible election.
Many of the elderly, who were Trump supporters, will die, appreciably moving the needle at 10% death rates of those age groups. Compound this with the higher overall health of liberals – counting suicide, obesity, drug and alcohol addiction, etc – and you have a perfect blue storm.
Parties will realign into a straight rich vs poor dichotomy, with both parties pandering to the poor and formerly middle class. For better or worse, after so much suffering, whoever promises to give the most wins, and the socialists are better at that by design. The poor will gain much ground.
Trump will have a very difficult time getting re-elected and will probably lose to Biden, who remind many of FDR leading us out of the Great Depression. Things will be very boring after Trump, a “return to normalcy,” but all the increasingly solidified echo chambers will insulate the various factions. Biden will cater heavily to progressives.
Progressivism will see its greatest adoption in memory
Much greater proliferation of psychedelic and marijuana use and taxing
The US government will never shrug off pandemic readiness ever again. SIngle payer medical care will arrive much much faster than previously thought.
Universal basic income will not be some crazy idea. Rapid automation + massive unemployment will make it a certainty.
Democratic socialism will become mainstream
Texas will go blue, “permanently” tilting the national calculus.
Even after a mass purchase of guns, after the smoke clears and liberals take over assault rifles will be once again banned after many many mass shootings and feelings of white powerlessness and paranoia against government encroachment of civil liberties will drive many modern-day Timothy McVeighs
Free college will be at least partially implemented, with trade schools copying from Germany
Note the time stamp of this video – February 5, a motnh before the hysteria hit the U.S. Next to NO ONE was talking abut Coronavirus at that time, and yet all their predictions have panned out.
Geopolitics
The world over, many formerly polluted areas will be clean, and people will take that as a new standard. The world will move radically towards cleaner energy and lower carbon.
The US military will greatly shrink, and the Americans will end up closing many overseas bases, and into the gap will step many regional powers. China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia will be much more powerful. With an American vacuum, there may be low-level warfare.
Africa will start to break off the Chinese yoke with unions and rationalizations. World will allow it due to species extinctions and Coronavirus
With the US retreat Australia will have no choice but to realign with China.
This will cause greater instability in the China Sea.
UK will indefinitely delay or rescind Brexit
Europe, having assimilated many of its 2015 immigrants, prospers
Eastern Europe will gallop ahead – Baltics, Ukraine, Poland Turkey will have very high growth
Turkey will move into the vacuum in the middle east. Kurds might get their own country.
Iran will develop a nuclear bomb.
Russia and OPEC will suffer greatly. Russia will flex much but not really be able to get away with any territory expansion
Venezuela will revolt and become a liberal democracy that ostensibly moves to democratic socialist but it will have a struggle with it.
Nothing changes in Israel. Choked tech supply chains are reoriented to selling Asia military. They will move towards closer alignment with the Saudis, even possibly helping them stave off a short-lived Wahabi insurrection.
So those are my predictions. I may be wrong on a few – the stupidity, ignorance, and naivete of the American peope never cease to amaze me – but let’s see how they pan out.
Update, July 11, 2020:
