Attempts to predict the future fail because we extrapolate from the present and can't factor in the unexpected.
Bu let's go ahead and extrapolate from the present anyway to see what might happen.
1 in 5 churches facing permanent closure within 18 months due to COVID-19 shutdowns. “The disruptions related to giving, and maybe even as important to all that, is that even for those churches that have reopened, they’re seeing much smaller numbers of people show up. So simply reopening a church doesn’t fix the underlying economic challenges that you might have.”
The economic damage of rioting lingers for a long time. It is a tragic truth of the recent riots that the damage was worst in areas which were already relatively economically impoverished. Even worse, economic research suggests that the areas afflicted will suffer from the damage inflicted by rioters for years to come.
Life will never be the same for people over 60 — even with a COVID-19 vaccine. These are the likely long-term impacts on gatherings, travel, eating, medicine, home life and even public restrooms. “In the past few months, the entire world has had a near-death experience,” said Ken Dychtwald, CEO of Age Wave, a think tank on aging around the world. “We’ve been forced to stop and think: I could die, or someone I love could die. When those events happen, people think about what matters and what they will do differently.”
Jeff Bezos Wants to Turn Shopping Malls into Amazon Warehouses. Many of the department stores previously occupied by Sears and JCPenney, both of which have filed for bankruptcy and closed dozens of stores, have left retail spaces across the country empty. Now, Amazon is attempting to purchase empty retail spaces to create multiple warehouse spaces in cities across the country allowing the e-commerce giant to decrease its delivery times on shipments.Urban Dwellers Pick Up The Pace On Looking For Homes In Suburbs And Beyond. In crowded housing markets hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, city dwellers are looking at where they want to live through a new lens. During the second quarter of 2020, 51% of realtor.com’s views from urban residents of the nation’s 100 largest metros went to suburban properties in their metros, a record high since the real estate listings website began tracking metro level search data in 2017.
Op-Ed: Thank COVID for These Improvements in Care Delivery. We have seen dramatic shifts in the use of telemedicine in just the past few months. At Kaiser Permanente, healthcare visits delivered remotely have increased from about one in five visits before the pandemic to more than four in five today. The speed with which this shift took place -- days and weeks rather than months and years -- stands as a collective accomplishment in the rapid evolution of care. And these changes are here to stay.
Is Working From Home The Future Of Work? Nearly half the U.S. workforce might now be remote workers. Cali Williams Yost, a flexwork expert and founder of the Flex + Strategy Group in Madison, N.J. says that as a result of COVID-19: “Work is forever changed” because “flexible work was made for times like these.”
Working from home saved commuters nearly $91 billion. Fewer trips to gas stations and repair shops add another $183 million in daily savings. Once Marginalized, Homeschooling Hits the Mainstream. Parents with children in government schools are heading for the exits, in search of options that better suit their needs now and in the future. It's part of an education revolution poised to leave government schools just one option among many, as once-marginalized approaches such as microschools, teaching pods, and homeschooling become perfectly mainstream.The Guardian view on video conferencing: the future of meetings? Huge numbers have attended online work meetings and social gatherings for the first time, with video conferencing apps downloaded a record 62m times over 10 days in March. Zoom, like Google, has become a verb. Tech enthusiasts promote the idea of the home office and virtual hangout as the new normal.
Will this be one of those sea changes like the move from farm to city? Well, as you know, we can't predict the future.
~ Palmary