Effects of a pandemic

The consequences of the lockdown of businesses and the curtailment of travel by State governors in response to the spread of COVID-19 in 2020 are many. The main purpose of the regulation is limiting the pandemic. The regulation has helped to achieve that goal. Many of the economic and social consequences, while unintentional, are nevertheless undesired and harmful. Some of those include losses of employment and income, the likelihood that many businesses will never reopen, psychological stresses with attendant use of tranquilizers, pain-relievers, alcohol and tobacco products, incidents of domestic violence.

Despite those terrible consequences, there are some positive effects: reductions in traffic congestion and accidents and injuries, decreases in consumption of fuel, reduced air pollution, fewer crimes committed on the streets, new and helpful commercial ventures. In particular, entities online have had a boost. Most significantly, perhaps, many tech companies that enable and many organizations that hold virtual meetings will see the benefits of providing and using technologies that favor communication over transportation.

Transportation will remain a vital sector of the economy, but there will be changes in who will be moving and how things are moved. Shifts have occurred before. In the forties and fifties, with increases in the ownership of autos, opportunities opened up for customers to shop at a wider variety of stores in preferred places. And businesses adapted to the new mobility of customers. Some services—the delivery of milk and baked goods to the doorstep, for example—faded away. More cars brought congestion to the highways and parking lots, more pollution of the atmosphere and, with that, a warmer planet.

Yet now, with the lockdown and reduction in the number of cars on the roads, ‘home delivery’ is resurgent. Firms that deliver products to homes and businesses have become more popular and will continue to grow. More and more people will choose to reduce the number of trips they take to the stores, as the goods they order online show up at their front doors the next day. This will help conserve energy and reduce pollution. And if fewer and fewer people are zipping around in their cars, there will be fewer accidents and less demand for the requisite medical and surgical services.

Sectors involved with communication via wired and wireless networks will grow at a faster rate than they have already been growing. Many more businesses will realize the values—the efficiency and the savings—resulting from virtual meetings. Face-to-face meetings, especially between people initially at opposite ends of the country, will not disappear, but there will be fewer. Many people will be relieved when their employers minimize the transportation that is just a chore to be endured for business that could more easily be conducted on the phone or the Web. Businesses aim to save time and money. Or they should. In any event, they might be forced.

The schools too may see lasting effects, as virtual learning gains in popularity, as more people acquire the necessary equipment to remain connected with educators. The brick-and-mortar that companies and institutions have relied on will continue to crumble as fiber optic cables proliferate.

Tourism will return, perhaps with new or reorganized companies, when people feel safe to travel. Sporting events, church services, concerts, conventions and festivals will resume, when people no longer fear proximity to hundreds of others.

If in the long run, thanks to an effective vaccine and widespread immunity, SARS-CoV-2 proves to be no worse than the influenza viruses to which we have become accustomed, the world will return to what it was before the outbreak. Almost. Depending on the time taken to relax restrictions on commercial activities and personal interactions, certain effects could be historic.

In the meantime, legislators have plenty of knotty issues to deal with in connection with this pandemic. They have to deal with questions that may never have been considered but are now fresh. For example, what businesses will the government support during and after the crisis? Should souvenir shops, tattoo parlors and strip clubs get economic aid, and to what extent? Will the government dole out benefits in proportion to the size of a business, its revenues, its number of employees, its ‘value to society’? Does the crisis afford governments the chance to modify societies to their liking? This is only the start of a list of concerns that political leaders find pressing.

There will be adjustments to international trade. Leaders will rethink the wisdom of obtaining critical goods from suppliers thousands of miles away. And they may have to rebuild industries, maybe in new locations, to replace the ones that have failed or those that cannot recover quickly.

There will be increased surveillance of citizens by governments and tech companies. Ordinary people will welcome the arrival of apps that track diseases like the apps that track traffic and weather. Most of the collection of personal data related to health can be benign, but we should be ever mindful of the possibilities of malicious behavior among those who would exploit technologies to acquire power or accumulate wealth for themselves or simply bring pain and suffering to the world to satisfy some perverse desire.

And even as they want big government off their backs and out of their lives, citizens may realize the importance of big government as friend and protector in times too difficult for individuals or even individual States to manage. Americans may see universal health care coming sooner rather than later. And given that there are illegal immigrants and others in the country who have no health insurance, but who can harbor and share a deadly virus, we are wise to want everyone to have access to the medical care that would make our communities safer. Basic health care for all thus helps protect everyone from the dangers of communicable diseases.

The pandemic spurred the manufacturing of critical medical supplies and equipment and pharmaceuticals inside the country. America should foster more of its own manufacturing of life-saving goods and reduce its reliance on other countries for the products most needed for local crises as well as national emergencies.

In the history of the world, the affairs of the nations have never been more interconnected than they are now. The mutual cooperation of countries, especially with regard to the sharing of information about the health of the people, is vital to safeguarding us all. Moreover, the funding of international organizations dedicated to eradicating disease is critical, even when the political tensions among nations are rife. Even as it ramps up its own industries better to serve itself, America can ill afford to withdraw from international bodies.

The transmission of diseases can have drastic consequences for politics and government. If a fatal illness befalls a president, prime minister, king, queen or dictator, the character of a government could change in an instant. In some cases, government would disappear. Hopefully, among the outcomes of the present pandemic, we will not see our history affected so dramatically. But we have seen drama enough. We are getting schooled in history—a slice of it anyway, in current events. We should make the most of it.