L R AS Published on Monday 23 March 2020 - n° 314 - Categories:various sectors
What are the long-term consequences of coronavirus?
The editor of MIT Technology Review (Gideon Lichfield) says that the world after the epidemic will not be the same as before. He predicts : "To stop the coronavirus, we're going to have to change radically...
almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our children, take care of family members".
It is based on the impossibility of eradicating the disease by means of containment. Thus, "the epidemic will last until a vaccine is found, or until enough people have been infected so that others are indirectly protected".
He says that we are "at the beginning of a completely different way of life.He says that we are "at the beginning of a completely different way of life," because all the businesses that depend on people coming together in large numbers: restaurants, cafés, bars, discos, gyms, hotels, theatres, cinemas, art galleries, shopping malls, craft fairs, museums, musicians and other artists, sports venues (and other venues), and the like.s, sports venues (and sports teams), conference halls (and event organisers), cruise lines, airlines, public transport, schools and universities, childcare facilities, are or will be durably affected.
To adapt, distancing measures will have to be imposed; some will offer services related to containment, using digital and home equipment. Probably, the attitude to be followed will also be more ecological and will valorise local circuits.
In the longer term, health services will have to be reorganised with more medical equipment, test kits and medicines. Above all, socialisation will be profoundly affected, removing from normal life those people who represent a health risk.
La Tribune of 21 March
