Eric Schmitt, Daily US Times: What will the world look like after the pandemic? Before the answer, think that what were we doing in the first week of January this year? A new year has just begun. We probably had a lot of plans for this new year. Many dreams, lots of promise.
Did we even have a nightmare that in just three months, hundreds of millions of people around the world will be trapped in their homes? The big cities will feel like lifeless mortals.
Roads will be deserted even during the day. Schools, colleges, and universities will be closed. Shops, bars, restaurants, and shopping malls will remain closed. All sports will be shut down – even the Olympic Games will be canceled. Prisoners will be asked to leave the jail and go home.
Each country will close their borders. Aviation will be closed. The stock market will collapse. People in supermarkets will fight for toilet rolls and food packets.
What Does Life Look Like After Coronavirus?
Billions of people will become unemployed in a few weeks. In the terror of an invisible enemy, every man will avoid another man, at least ten hands away.
Did any of us think that after three months our world would be like this? Now then we come back on April 24th.
By the time about a third of the world’s people, about two billion three hundred million people, are spending time in their homes.
So many people in the history of human civilization have no proof of being detained in their homes at the same time, continuously, for so long. The world system of the 21st century has been shattered by the attack of an invisible virus.
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No one has a clear idea of when to get rid of this situation. But experts and futurists who have already begun to talk about the afterlife of the coronavirus COVID-19 all agree on one thing: the world is no longer what it used to be. The effects of what has happened in the last few months will be far-reaching.
After the pandemic, everything from our work-daily life-travel-entertainment to business-trade-economy-state-society will change.
Experts offer ideas about the next world after the pandemic
Politics: The state of mass surveillance
In a recent article published in the Financial Times, historian Yuval Noah Harari fears that after the pandemic, a democratic state system may emerge, wherein the government will know not only the passions of every citizen but also the emotions, feelings, and dislikes.
In a nutshell, his thoughts are as follows: The short-term measures that are being taken after the pandemic may later become a permanent measure. And that path can lead to the rise of an autocratic state system, where mass surveillance will continue. On the other hand, instead of globalization, many countries will follow the nationalist let alone policy.
Now technology has come in that allows every citizen of the state to track the momentum of the moment.
In the name of preventing the pandemic, some countries have already started such work. China is at the forefront of this. All people’s smartphones are being monitored there.
People are being monitored with millions of cameras that can recognize their appearance.
How will the Coronavirus change global politics?
People are being forced to measure their body temperature, share health information, so authorities can quickly identify who is infected with the coronavirus COVID-19. Not only that, the people who came in contact with him are also being found quickly.
But the next step is to move this surveillance to a more intensive level.
Suppose the government of a country demanded that each of its citizens should wear a biometric bracelet. This bracelet will monitor people’s heartbeat and body temperature for 24 hours a day.
The data collected in this way will go to the government’s huge database. Will be analyzed with special algorithms. Before a man knows himself, the government will know with this algorithm who is healthy and who is ill.
Not only that, the information about who this person met and where he went. As a result, any contagious disease can be controlled as soon as it spreads.
Sounds great, isn’t it? So where is the problem?
Who is going to which website, which news link is being clicked, which video is being watched, it gives an idea about his interests and personality starting from his political thoughts?
But what if the government knows people’s body temperature, blood pressure and heartbeat fluctuate when they read something or watch a video, what makes them laugh and what makes them cry, or angry?
It is important to remember that our anger, joy, loneliness, love, love – like fever or cough – are also biological issues.
Technology that can detect our cough can also detect our smile. If the government and big corporations start collecting these biometric data in mass, they will know us better than we know or know them.
Economy: The great depression after the pandemic
Many believe that the pandemic may be under control, but it will take many years to recover from the devastating damage it has done to the world economy. Almost all major economies in the world have collapsed since the first week of March,
which is said to have surpassed the 2008 financial crisis and the economic crisis of the 1930s.
In the previous two crises, the stock market fell 50 percent, the credit market was almost closed, and business enterprises started to go bankrupt. Unemployment had dropped ten percent. But this whole thing happened for three years.
And since the global pandemic of coronavirus began, the economic collapse has taken place in just three weeks.
Coronavirus: How The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Impact The Global Economy
The US stock market took just 15 days to fall 20 percent. US Treasury Secretary Steve Manchin has warned that unemployment rates could go up by more than 20 percent. That means one out of every five people in the US will lose work.
According to the IMF, the world economy will shrink by three percent this year. If the pandemic continues, governments and central banks around the world will have to deal with the situation. And the economies of rich countries cannot be restored before 2022.
Nuriel Rubini, a professor at New York University, has written an article on the site of the World Economic Forum. According to him, economic activities throughout the world did not cease even during World War II, especially China, the United States, and Europe are stagnant now.
In Britain, the government has promised to pay people up to 80 percent of their salaries so that people are not laid off during lockdowns. Governments in many other European countries have adopted similar policies.
Like some economists, a kind of state-capitalist system or public-sector participation in the economy can be seen in the years ahead, as the market economy has seen for decades.
The last nail in the coffin of globalization?
According to historian Yuval Noah Harari, the rise of radical nationalism will be another major trend in the next world after the pandemic. Every state will want to protect itself by closing the door on the face of others.
Many such incidents have already taken place. Italy has complained directly that other European countries did not stand on the day of its disaster.
President Trump’s “America First” and “Let’s go it alone” policy became clearer during this crisis. The fact that he tried to buy a test of coronavirus only for the United States from a German company made it even tenser with Europe.
“In short, the next world of Covid-19 will be less open, less affluent, and less independent.” But Kishore Mahbubani, at the National University of Singapore, thinks, globalization will not stop, its focus will change.
Work-recreation-travel
Standing in a line is almost always visible in front of any grocery, pharmacy or food store in almost exclusively London or any other city in Europe. In a matter of weeks, people have adopted this custom of adhering to social distance. But when the lockdown goes up, then?
Experts say, whether we have a lockdown or get up, the way we go, shop, eat, walk, work, study – everything is going to change the coronavirus.
Some changes have already happened. Many people around the world are now working from home. Technology has made it very easy. Many schools and universities are teaching them online.
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One of the most affected sectors in coronavirus is aviation and tourism. Experts believe that if the pandemic persists and the intention of the coronavirus vaccine is delayed, these two sectors will suffer irreparable damage.
This means that the kind of uninterrupted travel that people are now accustomed to for work or leisure will change a lot. Air travel will become much more expensive. International tourism will collapse.
How terrible the next world after the pandemic
The Future Code and 2048
David Passig is a futurologist. His book ‘The Future Code and 2048’ is very popular. David Pasig thinks that how long these changes last will depend on how long the coronavirus pandemic lasts. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, he said there were three possible scenarios.
In the first case, the probable cause is that the pandemic will be under control in a year or two. But the pandemic will kill about a million people around the world. In this case, people will quickly forget the horrors of the pandemic and quickly return to their old habits.
But the second scenario, where the pandemic will last for about five years and about ten million people will die, will take another five years to cope. David Pasig describes the situation as “probable” and says it will be difficult to cope with the economic downturn. Yet after a while, people will return to their normal behavior, as happened after the Spanish flu pandemic.
Wild card scenario
David Pasig’s third scenario is the most terrifying. According to him, this is a ‘wild card scenario’, which means it is very unlikely. In this case, the pandemic will last for more than ten years and 100 million to 300 million people will die in it.
According to him, in such cases, there will be a lasting change in human behavior.
“Human-to-human contact will decrease and it will take ten to twenty years to overcome the fear that has crept into people’s minds when they come in contact with others.
And because of this human behavior, new types of services, industries, science, and many more will be developed.”
According to him, as a result, biology will become important, leaving behind the predominance of computer science and software development.
What will the world look like after the pandemic?
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