How CoVid19 is Changing Society

Note: originally written in the summer of 2020, and unedited to retain its historical perspective.

Two weeks of self-isolation has changed our world here at home. While some routines remain, new ones have emerged; we expect many changes we can’t predict; some will broadly re-order society.

History provides a guide to the magnitude of changes we can expect.

The term “quarantine” arose in the mid-14th century, as the bubonic plague – Black Death – was savaging commercial centers throughout Europe. The Venetian controlled city of Ragusa (today – Dubrovnik, Croatia) required in-bound ships to berth at an island for 40-days, a biblical period of cleansing, which they called ‘Trentino’. The word evolved into ‘Quarantino’, and proved effective enough that other ports and cities adopted similar measures. Today this strategy remains society’s most effective defense against pandemics.

We can thank an early 19th century cholera pandemic for the broad boulevards and large parks that define Paris today. Napoleon III commissioned Georges-Eugène Haussmann to provide more open space and air to disperse the ‘miasma’ thought to spread diseases, in a project that lasted two decades. Paris razed dense neighborhoods and installed sewers, parks, and other health based features that define urban infrastructure today.

Today’s quarantine inspired isolation will have unimaginable effects in business and science. The wife of a fellow i know posted blueprints for respirators costing less than $100 to build, and Abbot Labs has just developed a five minute infection test. Drone delivery will replace highly vulnerable human delivery. But beyond these crisis driven innovations, there will be more. The period following the mortgage crisis with spiked unemployment in 2008-2009 gave birth to some of today’s most disruptive technologies: Uber and Lyft, airbnb, Venmo and others. Powered by 5G, software engineers working from home – between assignments in Silicon-Valley-speak – will develop more new disruptive applications whose effects nobody can predict.

Our office closed its physical location and became ‘virtual’ on Monday, March 16th, and on Tuesday we had a Zoom subscription. We now have daily meetings to replicate the social and business value of a physical office, and are executing new management techniques we would never have considered from our physical office. While I had used video conferencing for webinars, I had never held ‘face-to-face’ meetings over video conference. Today, it’s how we meet with people, and not just for business: morning workouts, daily cocktail hours with family or friends, birthday parties. New learning applications have become mainstream.

A friend of mine is a professor at a small liberal arts college in ski country, where many top athletes train. The transition of all content on-line within the course of days has been a challenge, but has already prompted innovation for top athletes. There had been discussions on extending on-site training in the summer and fall, with courses continuing virtually while the athletes compete throughout the winter. This ‘idea’ now has legs, because course material is available virtually. These student athletes won’t have to choose between competing and learning. Soon they may be doing both .

I believe the experience of evaporating paychecks and devastated 401k balances will prompt greater savings habits (as our my Depression forged parents taught us) as well as lengthened work for boomers on the cusp of retirement.

Ideologically based public policies, such as banning plastic bags, or densely populated planned habitation include unexpected external costs borne by society, now more evident in an age of highly contagious viruses, Suburbia has new appeals when social distancing yields clear health benefits. All places where humans used to congregate – sports arenas, concerts, even restaurants and bars – may never fully recover as we view close contact more carefully, skeptically.

Global supply chains are reorganizing, and borders recently opened in Europe have closed again. The Trump bifurcation of Sino-American commerce is accelerating as Americans question dependency of Chinese pharmaceuticals and other products, not just strategic.

Whether the Chinese model of quarantine under physical threat, or the American decentralized model of federalism coordinated with private solutions is better is an open question. Friends of ours are still playing tennis daily in Florida, as New Yorkers with means escape that hot zone for Florida and the Hamptons or the Lakes. Only time will tell which system handles the pandemic most effectively. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson offers a lesson in the ‘Immunizing the Herd’ (evolutionary selection) leadership strategy.

For people of faith, many of the false gods – star athletes, actors and entertainers, money – that crowd God out of our lives are sidelined, suddenly inconsequential. We are finding time to be with people we love, more time for prayer, study, and reflection. As with much of this, from inconvenience and challenge comes opportunity, perhaps to reassess what is most important in our lives. For people of all faiths, this time is a blessing.

We have a board game at home named “Pandemic”. It’s a collaborative game, meaning all players play against the game. We’ve played it many times, usually around Christmas when the kids are home. As with other games of strategy that are rooted in historical times, the best games provide experiential decision making amidst multi-variant forces of power: economic, political, logistical, scientific, military, societal. ‘Pandemic’ focuses on logistical, societal, and science… much like the forces most consequential today.

We don’t know what’s next, but we are in the midst of the greatest change in recent history: for society and for ourselves. For all of us, this will be a foundational life event. We are making history now, so let’s make the best of it.