Long term, part2

So the chances are that whilst Covid-19 will eventually be controlled there will be further pandemics and they are quite possibly going to become more common. I make that outrageous claim only because it is like the genie getting out of the bottle, once it is out you cannot get it back in the bottle, however you might try to trick it into doing so! As the virus is out and has mutated into a form that can spread without quickly killing everything it infects, which would be its own end too, then it will continue to exist and mutate in the giant petri dish that is 7 billion people on Earth.

The virus is already endemic, so it is now embedded in society, as noted in previous blogs, unless we lockdown the whole world for three weeks without anybody ever going out for that period no matter what and leaving the dead to remain in their beds until that period is over, the virus will remain endemic. Now given that however anybody might think that the extreme measure I suggest is maybe possible, it really simply is not, it will never happen.

Keep in mind that the virus which, as of writing has infected c.2million people worldwide (although we should all hope that this is an under estimate) it started with one single person. One transmission from an animal to a human. So while there is at least one human being who is carrying the virus in a transmittable state... it is endemic.

Next, we have to consider that it is a virus that appeared because it mutated from other variants of coronavirus until it found of way of crossing the barrier into human beings and could replicate. Other mutations will exist that either could not cross the barrier and others that have crossed but could not replicate or did not replicate effectively.

I know I make it sound like the virus thinks but of course it does not. It is back to Darwinism and selection of the fittest mutation, just like us! And we stretch back to hot water vents deep in the oceans millions of years ago. Anyway, moving on. This pandemic is nowhere near finished yet and in truth will not be over until there is a vaccine to combat it. I'll get back to my original train of thought in a second but first a segue.

It is worth noting, however much you hate me for doing so, that whilst I believe there will be a vaccine developed to fight this virus, and therefore a blueprint vaccine for all future mutations, there are plenty of other viruses in the world that we do not have vaccines for or that have taken decades to find and prove as effective. For instance, there is still no approved vaccine against HIV and that was first identified in 1981 and has killed 35million people and is still rising. Do not confuse vaccine with treatments and prophylactics. But then HIV did not cause the car crash of a crisis we are currently living in which gives me more hope that, simply because of economics, there will be a vaccine arriving within a year or so. As a statement, that's very sad, I think you'll agree.

Anyway, where did I leave that point. Ah yes, I know. I was thinking about long term impacts or effects.

Apart from the potential personal impacts like having discovered the wonderful things that we can do when we are forced to and then deciding that we might want to keep on doing them even when we no longer have to. There are also the impacts upon things like how we conduct business and economic shockwaves.

For a few decades now we have increasingly been able to change the way we work. To change from 9-5 lives in office blocks and become more distributed and for the time we work to change to fit better with anything from child care to time zones if working with teams that are geographically distant. But change has come very very slowly to most businesses, there are ever more office blocks being built and still they tend to have core working hours between 9-5! Rarely, if ever, has this been the choice of the many employees who daily commute to these temples of commerce rather it is the determination of the management teams who feel more in control if all of their employees are safely sat at their individual desks. In addition there is a success factor, the owners and shareholders of organisations feel they are doing well if they can point to fifty stories of office block teeming with human ants churning out paper and making money.

This pandemic and the lockdowns that come with it could, or rather should, be encouraging those office and desk based businesses to start to look at utilising the technology that has been around for decades to not simply get back to work but to change the whole way in which they conduct business in the future. Ife ever there were a time to start to experiment with work from home, flexible working hours and more, it is now. And as somebody that spent most of their working life trying to get businesses to change, generally unsuccessful for the stupid reasons outlined above, I would really like to think this would happen.

The changes to high streets and general shopping has been moving on-line for decades already and many a high street around the world has become a modern day desert with tumbleweed made of newspaper (at least it would be if there were still newspapers!) because of the convenience of on-line shopping. One area that has made progress but surprisingly, perhaps, has not made even more progress, until now, is online grocery shopping. But the pandemic and the lockdowns, in the west at least, have led to huge, logistics busting, increases in demand and it is possible that demand will continue after the lockdown ends if the supermarkets get things right. That said, the supermarkets do quite like people coming into their stores because they offer the chance to sell things that you would not consider on line hence the highly profitable end shelves and special offer markers. In fact supermarkets spend millions on store designs to both help you move fast but also to draw you into looking at things not on your shopping list. But they might need also to adapt.

One more area, and there are plenty of others, where positive change could be achieved, although I have to caution my choice of the word positive, is in manufacturing. The impact of the lockdown and the potential of future lockdowns should cause manufacturers around the world to put even greater effort into making advances in productivity, generally through the use of technology and machine design. Granted this would be at the expense of human workers but productivity increases are how economies around the world grow and that is how living conditions improve. I understand the arguments about trickle down not working but when I look at the numbers I'm pretty sure that life is improving albeit at the margins that change is very very slow, but it is there. Anyway, that's a discussion for another year!

If ever there was an impetus for businesses to start progressing their productivity improvements, now would seem to me to be a really good time to start. Not least as a) we do not know when this will end and b) we don't know when the next one will come along like a proverbial London red bus!

And productivity changes should not simply mean that millions of workers are put out of work, it should mean that an emphasis on retraining towards higher skilled work is the order of government. That said, governments around the world tend to need a bit of education themselves to make sure that happens. In the interim period there tends to be the creation of no end of unfortunately menial temporary jobs in what has become known as the gig economy. And one thing this pandemic and its lockdown has shown to be catastrophic to has been those people in the gig economy. Quite what the long term future has to offer I am uncertain. But that's enough for today I think!