The Pandemic Economy — Part III: Structural changes in the economy and in society
Part III describes how different aspects of the economy and society will have to evolve in the context of a permanent presence of a pandemic virus.
Part I describes the current state of affairs in the Covid-19 crisis and why this is a long term world wide problem that requires us to live with it in a permanent way.
Part II describes the immediate actions we must do to actually stop COVID-19 and reopen the country safely, and not like happens today, too unprepared.
Part IV describes how our laws will change to cope with a pandemic environment and how the way governments will use the money creation process to pay for pandemic adaptation.
Table of Content — Part III
Part III — Structural changes in the economy and in society
- Going out & traveling
- Shopping and eating out
- Work
- Supply chains
- Transport
- Urbanization, migration, housing & energy storage
- Think about the children!
Structural changes in the economy and in society
Exhaustive communication, adequate protection through local production, extensive, massive and regular testing, and technology driven contact tracing and controlling are the shock troops in this viral war, necessary to halt the virus offensive.
However, this does not mean that the virus will be defeated and that we will return to the normality we once knew.
All the activities described above require a whole series of permanent and supporting measures and conducts, as well as logistical and structural adaptations to support their effectiveness and keep the virus contained. If not for this pandemic, then for the one thereafter. We cannot go back and pretend this is a one off anymore.
This paper focuses primarily on practicalities (impractical as they might seem to some) and does not reflect on the mental well-being of people which is an omission by design. Suffice it to say that many of the measures below can and will exacerbate already existing stress-factors in society that were often induced by inequality and choices made by our previous, more social, lifestyles, or because things that now have become important, simply were not a consideration until now.
Although these measures are the result of the constraint imposed by the virus and are often very limiting, they can and must also provide us with opportunities to improve aspects that are ignored today and can contribute to our transforming into a more equitable society.
Social distancing will continue to exist in the following months and years and even be institutionalised sector-wise. People will not be able to gather in mass for the foreseeable future and no one should be compelled to put him- or herself in a situation in which they risk contamination.
On the other hand, people are social beings and keeping our distance is contrary to our nature. It is therefore imperative to think about this so we can adapt to it in time.
The examples below are meant to make us reflect on the consequences of a pandemic economy in our society and how it must integrate changes in our lifestyle that was, up till now, almost without boundaries.
A few of those examples are not far-fetched and it is easy to consider their urgent implementation. Others seem more futuristic or over-the-top and will only be considered if we receive signals that this new normality really will be our new long term normal, without any possibility to avoid it.
1. Going out & traveling
A direct significant impact is avoiding “superspreader” events where many people gather as they create a high risk of infection. It will be the kiss of death for the events industry as it exists today: Rock Werchter, Batibouw, Autosalon, Ronde van Vlaanderen, flea markets, concerts (Vorst nationaal, Sportpaleis), musicals, marketing events, theatre productions, fun fairs, parades and processions, and every football event in a stadium where specific measures for social distancing, including entering and leaving the stadium, cannot be put in place, or only with major precautions and efforts. In the latter case the question is if the event ever can be made profitable.
There might still be opportunities for places like museums or monuments that are able to control the number and flow of visitors and create an IKEA type of layout where you follow a one direction path. However, in absence of that, it is hard to imagine situations in the events industry where distance can be reasonably guaranteed.
But, people are creative, and maybe we all go soon to Tomorrowland wearing “pandemic proof raving suits”…as if you’re not cooking within 5 minutes in that thing when hopping around.
In the future, large events will move online. This forms a big opportunity for Virtual Reality as seen in Ready Player One. The people in the event industry are facing a large digital transformation if they do not want their industry to diminish, or even disappear for a long time.
On the other hand, the 30 years of coming of age as the next big thing that Virtual Reality was supposed to be, might finally come to pass.
When traveling within the EU, countries will harmonise and exchange data in order to share the infection status of their citizens from the moment they want to leave the country, by car or by other means.
People will be expected to take a test in the days before and, logically, will not be allowed to leave if they are infected. The border posts, abandoned after Schengen, will be used again, and people will be controlled for their test status. This could be a virtual border post where your mobile sends an alert if you are infected once your roaming switches to a cell phone provider in the other country. In the absence of a recent test result, people will be asked to take the test again.
In hotels, the visitor’s test status will be scanned as part of the check-in procedure, just like their passports are registered today. Non-tested persons will be asked to take the test immediately in one of the test posts nearby or using a hotel’s test set.
When taking the train or the airplane, people will, at the entrance of the station or airport, and respecting the social distancing rules, be controlled or tested, just as it happened after the 2016 bomb attacks at Brussels airport. Airplanes have not been made to contain airborne contamination, as everyone who ever took one can attest, and as confirmed by research.
Therefore people will have to protect themselves even more on the airplane or train via portable bubbles.
The “cattle class shield”, proposed by some, as well as the seat setup shown below, not only seems impractical, but also ineffective, given the way the particles spread.
Between flights, the planes will have to be decontaminated with UV-C light. This will increase turnaround times, further increasing costs and reducing opportunity to generate volume-based revenue.
The imposed social distancing rules will lead to a lower occupancy rate, higher prices and, therefore, less revenues. The cattle-class business model seems dead and buried and most airline companies will go bankrupt and/or be nationalised.
This is not helped by the fact that, over the last 10 years, they listened to late stage capitalism consultants and cashed out most of their profits as dividends which leaves them now without any buffer left. Most governments are therefore loath to bail out their billionaire owners, unless your country is France or Germany. Bad and predatory business models do not make for popular politics.
In any case, both the cost, practical restrictions and the administration will lead to much less traveling than it was the case today.
While traveling will not be impossible, the lack of social distancing possibilities and the increased costs will largely put an end to mass travelling. This business has been a major source of revenue for many countries and the revenue it generated will be hard to replace. Travelling to nearby places will be limited as well and more distant travelling will be, unfortunately, mainly a perk for the wealthy.
Everyone will have to travel “first class” and pay the price for it because that is the only model that allows the necessary distancing.
2. Shopping and eating out
Next, we need to keep people out of those shops where many people gather.
Shops, in particular grocery shops, are sources of propagation of the virus. At the same time, it is often necessary to go physically to a grocery shop (choosing between starvation or the risk to be infected).
Negligence and the lack of discipline from both the supermarkets and the public has a strong impact on ongoing infections. If shop assistants start to fall ill, we will face even more problems.
Large grocery chains have a web shop. However, they do not have the capacity today to propose the total range of products in their shops and, worse, are not capable to manage the demand for delivery or (drive-thru) pick-up. This service is currently insufficiently developed and needs to become a priority.
In his own hometown, the author has noticed that the local supermarket started making deliveries at home. This should be a solution put in place everywhere. Today, the groceries are paid for by cash in an envelope, but this should happen electronically without physical contact. A lot of technology exists to make that happen which is still underused.
If one needs to go to the store nonetheless, the layout should be adapted in such a way that people do not have to cross each other, as is the case today. Masks, gloves and keeping distance are compulsory since one sneeze can infect a whole aisle, according to a Finnish study. Even more reason to dictate the use of masks during shopping.
Distance selling will be widespread in the retail sector. Coolblue and Bol represent locally the gold standard for selling white goods, like kitchen appliances, as well as brown goods, like washing machines. Unfortunately, they are also “foreign” companies as Belgium has been substandard in embracing e-commerce. Local chains have thus been caught flat footed. However, standardisation, quality labels, guarantees and digitalisation of catalogues have prepared for this change and there is no reason to impede its general implementation.
Digital support for smaller shops, through standardised shop portals and collective portals, will be necessary. However, in the long term, this digitalisation will lead to the further concentration of the larger brands, whereas local shops will mostly serve as intermediate storage facility. This trend already exists today with newspaper shops and will only be strengthened in the future.
Measure-specific retail, like clothing and shoe stores, have more difficulties to sell online, but e-tailers like German Zalando prove that it is possible. On the other hand, specialised physical stores will still have their niche, but they will have to reorganise in order to avoid contact, with fitting rooms using serving hatches and selling on appointment. Unfortunately, many stores will close, due to the lack of funds to invest in the necessary physical separations or because of the lack of knowhow to go online. To solve the vacancies resulting from these closures, their buildings will be converted into housing or become satellite offices for companies whose local employees come to work there in closed cubicles instead of working from home (see below).
The whole idea of shops presenting a design-oriented interior in order to lure people inside might still exist for looking only, but will move largely online. People will use more and more hyper realistic virtual reality to check things and physical shops will gradually be replaced by storehouses.
Restaurants can only open provided that the seating is far enough apart. Only recently tested people will be welcome, given the inability to eat with a mask on, and it will be reservation only. The online reservation form will have a QR code you scan with your tracing app, which sends the last testing date to the reservation provider. The reservation will only proceed when the day of testing and the reservation date are not more than a week apart, for example. Alternatively, you can make a reservation, but the confirmation email has a link to mandatory do this scan when you are close to your reservation date.
Given the fact that many restaurants try to place the highest possible number of tables in the smallest possible area to improve unit economics, many will not be profitable anymore, unless their prices go up drastically. The question is also whether many people will be willing to go to a restaurant and take the risk. The restaurants with enough space, that have invested in adequate divisions between people and that propose special “experiences”, might be able to survive; people like to go out and are willing to pay the bill.
A special problem with COVID-19 for restaurants is that the virus remains active for a long period of time on metal surfaces. Most restaurants and soup kitchens use materials in zinc. These need to be changed into, for example, copper, which is known to kill COVID-19. The rules regarding food security will be strengthened and special attention will be given to hygienic measures and the control for traces of COVID-19 on food. The kitchen personnel will be tested regularly, a requirement to come to work. The cutlery, glasses and plates on the table will need to receive a special treatment to ensure sterility.
More likely, however, is that many restaurants will transform in take-away restaurants as people do get fed up with cooking at home. For this, they do not need an expensive first-class luxurious location to provide the service. Many restaurants will therefore end their lease in the centre of the city and establish themselves in cheaper areas from where they can prepare food and deliver it more comfortably. This will lead to more vacancies in the city which will be transformed into housing.
In this pandemic “distance economy”, home delivery will be a critical activity and must be massively expanded, kicking out the predatory fee gouging platforms. Especially for smaller deliveries, a local network of couriers must be developed. The advantage is that a small group of people, working in a local context, can limit the contamination risk through delivery. These people deliver goods from local shops and restaurants to homes. Municipalities could support their organisation and collect the local stores’ contact details, print leaflets, deliver them at home and people can use them to order locally.
Bars will cease to exist in their current form. There might be places, like the Oude Markt in Louvain where you can sit outside, but only when the weather allows it and when the chairs are placed at a proper distance. Otherwise, bars are too undifferentiated to exist, due to their high level of social attractiveness.
3. Work
It will be the end of going to work every day.
The Corona crisis showed that many people can do their work effectively from remote. 37% in the US and above 40% for Belgium, according to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business research.
Forcing people to work together in one building is a 18th century invention. With the first factories created to house large machines, there was a need for a docile on-site workforce. To achieve this, more control over them was required. Today, however, this system is an anachronism perpetuated by watercooler myths for most knowledge workers. Throughout civilization, humanity worked mainly from home and we are presented with an opportunity now to marry the best of both worlds.
The tools to work from remote exists since long, and even Belgium’s largest grocer, Colruyt, with a strong culture of collaboration at the office, were able to have all their office staff working from home at short notice. The same is true for banks. Most headquarter staff (95–99%) worked from home during April, using online conference software to have remote meetings. They are using collaborative software like electronic scheduling boards, screen sharing and online document management systems to access & share information. These kinds of functionalities are mature and available to everyone.
The model that is being used by many start-ups to work with their remote teams can be copied by service companies, lawyer offices and notaries who can now even execute deeds from a distance.
Even if we return to a situation where people are expected to show up in office because not everything can be done from a distance or because it is impossible for everyone to work from home all the time, this will only be feasible for part of the workers at any time to reduce the risk. One option is to create replicated teams, called squads in Agile terms, multidisciplinary or not, that always work together, but do not have contact with other squads doing the same job (the work bubble). In case of contamination, contact is restricted to the squad. Interaction with other squads that do a different type of work and with whom needs to be cooperated, will happen at more than an arm’s length distance and through designated contact persons if the work cannot be done from a distance. The use of masks and gloves will always be required during such interactions.
The characteristics of the current workplace, in which everyone shares an open office where not more than 4m² per person is reserved, is unsustainable. We need to return to closed offices that isolate people to a larger degree, which entails less available working space.
The idea of indicating visual spaces around desks, is, just like for supermarkets and airplanes, more a wish than a practicality given the spread of particles in open spaces.
A much better idea is the concept of Office Phone Booths or Minipods which provide complete isolation while not taking much more space than a classic cubicle.
Moreover, we do not want to encourage people to flock together in the hallways, at the coffee machine and in toilets because of the contamination risks. Virtual bubbles will have to be used.
The buildings must be made Corona-resistant. This means that, on the one hand, air-conditioning’s filtration systems need to be changed with HEPA-style filters in order to impede the virus to spread. On the other hand, mechanically unventilated and closed rooms, like toilets, will have to be ventilated , as the virus lingers there a long time.
High-touch surfaces like elevator buttons and door handles must be replaced with no-touch systems. Imagine elevators that are called through mobile apps (scan the QR code at the elevator and enter a floor number), and doors that are voice-activated with vocal “shush’s” or automatically opened and closed with motion sensors. Over time, most hinge-based doors will be replaced by sliding doors, wherever this is physically possible.
Service companies will become increasingly virtual and explore further the use of virtual reality (the 2000s of Second Life are back, but now for real). Their real estate needs will shrink, but at the same time, they will expand regionally. These regional offices offer certain in-person experiences or accommodate employees who prefer not to work from home. These regional offices will have to be accommodated in such a way that maximal social distancing is encouraged and that employees can be tested regularly. Many of those regional offices can be accommodated in the empty larger stores in town and empty shopping centres who will have mainly gone online.
To disinfect premises, we will initially need more people do clean door handles and surfaces. However, automated solutions, like devices using UV-C light, will be used more and more to kill the virus through radiation. These devises will be built-in in the office space over time and automatically be activated when no one is in the room, just like today when ordinary lights are turned off.
In industrial companies, the work floor needs to be organised in such a way that labourers can keep distance from each other, both through workplace markings and virtual bubbles, using signalisation to mark the ‘territory’ for different teams and areas for passing goods. Shift based squads that only work with the same persons will also be organised in this sector. Common spaces, like dressing rooms, need to be rethought and include extra space to guarantee more distance. The HVAC systems must be controlled to prevent virus propagation through the air, using HEPA filters. The protocols for putting on, taking off, collecting and washing workwear need to be established in such a way that they avoid contamination.
A more extreme strategy to avoid contamination is to adapt drastically the work schedules so that people isolate themselves in the factory for 3 weeks or a month. They are tested when entering the isolation period and stay in the factory in special rooms set up for the purpose. In this way, the risk for contamination is minimised. This is a variation of what already exists for seasonal work, like in the agriculture[EyKPD2] or construction sector: groups of labourers from foreign countries come and work in the field or on a building site, and people working in particular tourism places, like ski resorts, work only there during peak season.
Building sites, as well as factories, encounter the specific issue of people’s transport. The vans and trucks in which people are collected and brought to the building sites or factories close to one another, create conditions that defeat all the possible measures taken on the workplace location itself. Those people risk contamination before they even arrive and can protect themselves. The solution appears to be that workers provide for their own transport, for which they have to receive the necessary means, or that they only move around with colleagues from their work bubble squad, the ones with whom they work exclusively together. They can also wear protective hazmat work wear, a stadium bubble or, at least, N99-masks with face protection when they are physically close to their colleagues.
For people who are outside for longer periods of time, and have to be on the move rather than to be stationary, like police and building guards, a single person pod can be used to provide them with the necessary weather and infection protection while providing the necessary flexibility.
Transparency note: the author has no relationship whatsoever with the company making these bubbles, but he thinks it is a brilliant concept made for this age.
4. Supply chain
The pandemic clearly has shown the fragility of supply chains of materials, not in the least of the ones that we most urgently need: protection and test materials. During the evolution to a multipolar world in which China and the US increasingly compete, with Russia as a general (and evil) killjoy, the pandemic has, if not killed the globalisation model in the long term, at least shown that we better do not put all our eggs in one basket.
In the medium term, part of the production will return to Europe because of political and strategic reasons. On the one hand, this will increase the price of many goods because our wages are higher. On the other hand, this will give rise to new jobs. Depending on the influence that the pandemic will have on the collaboration between major powers, this evolution will happen to greater or lesser extent.
The new factories necessary for this production need to be built, and since the pandemic’s dynamic is to decentralize, those factories will be built away from major population centres. They will become an attraction for people and, hence, housing. This will relieve the pressure on the existing housing market and decrease there further the prices of housing in the current economic centres, while creating demand for new houses in the areas where the factories will be built.
5. Transportation
As more people work remotely and shop online, there will be less traffic. Moreover, the existing traffic will be more local. Less people will be able to justify the use of a car in their budget (or their employer will reduce this advantage in their compensation) what will lead to a decrease in the number of cars.
Under the category “I’ll believe it when I see it”, we see the possibility that part of the car’s role will be taken over by Robotaxis. Tesla would like to deploy them this or next year, in 2021, and other companies might be stepping up their investments in this area.
In that case, the question on how subsequent passengers do not contaminate the cars for the next passengers, need to be solved. Tesla’s equipment of their Model X with their “Bioweapon Defence Mode” using HEPA filters purifying the air, could be the basis of a possible solution deployed in such cars, or in any car for that matter.
This will probably be augmented with UV-C lighting in the car that is activated between rides.
The Corona crisis has shown us, through spectacular images of the sky of Los Angeles and other cities, the reduction of local air pollution, caused by the traditional internal combustion engines.
Every year, 800.000 people die from the consequences of air pollution, but no one ever took it serious. National interests combined with business interests formed a devil’s pact where jobs were being traded for human lives and asthmatic conditions.
On the other hand, for a virus like Corona, which has only killed a fraction of that number of deaths, we did not hesitate to bring society to a complete standstill. It seems to this author that we have not yet sorted out our priorities. Indeed, being confused between deaths caused by a virus without economic benefit and deaths caused by transport with an economic benefit, but for which alternatives exist, speaks volumes about putting industry interests above public health.
It seems now that air pollution has a strongly aggravating impact on the mortality caused by the COVID-19 virus. People exposed to strong air pollution have a more compromised health, making them more susceptible to the virus. On top of that, it could also be that air pollution particles serve as a distributor for the virus.
Both issues, less need for cars and air pollution as an enabler for infection, lead to the logical conclusion that the Pandemic economy needs to ban internal combustion engines and only allow electrical cars, a thesis that was explored in an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal.
The government could, along the lines of the “Cash for Clunkers” programme in the US during the 2008 financial crisis, encourage people to hand in their older models in exchange for a substantial discount on an electrical car.
In addition to definitively greening the transport, this change will give a major injection to the car industry albeit from a lower base, given the lesser need for transportation.
Public health will be much improved and the amount of lives saved by cleaner air will more than offset the death toll from COVID-19.
Already, roads are being reorganised in cities, starting with road signage giving priority for different kinds of traffic than cars, like electrical bicycles or motorcycles. Pedestrians and cyclers will have to be separated from each other, including their direction of movement.
Just like cyclists have learned to wear a safety helmet, they will have to learn to use a mask. This is already the norm in highly polluted cities, and it will become a general practice. Those masks will avoid the spreading of particles, rather than the inhalation of polluted air. For cars, a growing number of one-way streets will be introduced to allow more cyclers and pedestrians to circulate.
Public transport will be challenged by several conflicting needs and restrictions for which no easy solutions exist. The aim of mass-transit, just like the name implies, has always been to transport as many people as possible in the smallest possible space, and as cheap as possible (as-in subsidized), from A to B. Trains, trams, subways/metros or busses clearly are superspreaders that do not belong in a pandemic economy in their current setup.
On the other hand, less people will go to offices, leaving public transport means nearly not as full, if not mostly empty, allowing for social distancing. But many people working directly for the pandemic economy (contact tracers, sterilisers, transporters, persons taking tests, app controllers) will still need public transport to get to their place of destination, which will not always be in their own municipality.
Whatever way the scale tips, people using public transport need to keep their distances. This will imply cramming less people on a m² than before.
With less revenues, public transport will even be less self-financing than it is today. An increase of density could be realised by the same sort of physical bubbles as the ones on the plane, or by installing single cabins on busses and trains with air extraction systems. This, however, will make public transport even more expensive without even the possibility to reach the same transport capacity from before.
We might have to rethink public transport, thinking of monorail pods, or even single-person hyperloops aboveground.
6. Urbanization, migration, housing & energy storage
To reduce and manage the risk of infection people will have to live further apart again, enabled by the virtualisation of enterprises, their regional fragmentation, the return of strategic manufacturing facilities (see further) requiring a lot of space in underdeveloped areas and the explosive increase in home deliveries.
The net effect of the pandemic distance economy is that much of the existing commercial real estate will be liberated for housing in big cities where it will cause prices to decrease. Especially because new housing will not be used to increase density and fill cities with even more people, but the opposite. It will be used to decrease the density within the city. Apartments need to be larger again, having less persons living per square meter so future quarantines are easier to follow and the risk of transmission is reduced.
Certainly, the whole concept of care homes for the elderly, concentrating them, is over and done with. Reality has shown that, once the virus nestles itself there, we cannot avoid a high contamination rate with associated high mortality numbers.
More open spaces must be created in cities too, not for people to gather, but to give them more space between each other. Squares and the space in front of shops will be divided in, well, squares that can accommodate only 1 person at the same time (unless they are of the same family). The square entrances (or shopping streets) will be equipped with gates ensuring that not too many people will be present at the same time on the square, which would lead to the infringement of the social distancing measure.
A further consequence of the Corona crisis is that the whole housing development strategy of the last 20 years in Belgium and elsewhere, specifically Flanders, called “densification”, the creation of higher densities of living by filling in large areas inside municipalities with ever smaller housing (family apartments of less than 100m² and such), is seriously put into question.
Spreading out, however would not be a return to the uncontrolled outgrowths of the 60s and 70s in the countryside but be supported by a strong spatial plan, that includes the regionalisation of companies as well as the return of manufacturing sites.
This being said, Flanders is, in practical terms, almost completely built up so there will have to be a bigger increase in houses built in Wallonia where there are large regions with low population density.
This region will see an influx of the Flemish-speaking population and thus become more Flemish speaking, turning the current tide of federalism and even separatism back toward unitarism. This will lead to political and social tensions if we do not foresee a new modus vivendi.
In fact, the Pandemic economy stops and reverts the prevalent dynamic where people move more and more to cities where they live in higher concentrations. The opposite movement is the only way of living less close to each other and avoid a high infection risk. Its success is shown in Germany, where there is not one city that dominates economic life, like Paris in France, or London in the United Kingdom. This breakdown in medium-sized “centre cities” has allowed Germany to replicate most facilities at a large enough scale, offering enough volume and scope to allow for high quality services.
At an even larger scale, this could drive further European integration by having tens of millions of people move from high density regions in Europe to lower density ones (geography permitting), which will require crossing borders. Obviously, this also has the opportunity to create large tensions given our history of jingoism in combination with xenophobia. In this respect, the longer-term effects of the pandemic and their successors can go both ways, positive or negative, when people’s hands are forced to take decisions that had never been envisioned before.
There is no one way to accommodate such large-scale urbanization transformation.
A first step will be the revaluing and renovation of existing but decaying existing regional centres, victims of the ongoing concentration in superstar cities. But these will soon have to be extended with large scale new low-density housing and infrastructure projects.
This will drive further automation and standardization in housing construction. One example, through assisting robots like Robbie, for example, houses can be built twice as quickly as before.
This however will soon give way for other, more performant techniques like the printing of whole houses according to a digital blueprint, and assisted robots will be used more for supporting activities.
Finally, whole houses will be modularly constructed elsewhere and shipped to their location. An easy to imagine innovation in this area would be an increase in container living, which is much easier to set up in new, underdeveloped areas, as opposed to building houses in the conventional way.
This “tiny house” evolution would form a unique opportunity to be combined with an increased energy self-sufficiency, using solar, wind and batteries rather than conventional oil and gas or electricity generated from large power plants. It would reduce pollution, and, hence, reduce a distribution mechanism for COVID-19’s. Today, those market offerings already exist for this, but they still have to ride a learning curve to create scale economies.
An important element in there is the possibility to use the battery of your electric vehicle as energy storage for the house. After all, a 100KWh battery has enough energy to power 10 houses for a day.
Most houses and cars will still be connected to the grid for either offloading their excess solar generated energy or to pull in energy in a crunch. This could go in 2 layers.
First, groups of houses are connected to green community grids or microgrids, pooling their resources and even invest in shared energy storage like large batteries or energy generation, like shared wind turbines. These could be grouped, controlled, balanced, and billed by smartgrid software within that pool.
Second, separate microgrids could then interact with each other and with conventional Transmission System Operators (TSO’s) who are connected to classic power stations. In this way, the energy needs of the different players can be balanced in order not to imbalance the grid. Typically, there will be a coordinating entity between the microgrids and the TSOs.
7. Think about the children!
This contribution to societal measures cannot end without incorporating a section on youth and the way they should be accompanied in a pandemic society. Children are both our future and a challenge since they get in touch with each other in many different ways, informally and formally. This is necessary for their development, but also provides risks to propagate infections. In the context of COVID-19, they are less affected by the virus themselves but they form a risk factor for passing it on to the adults who can be much more affected if they get infected.
Let it be clear that, in the issues described below, the author does not attempt to contemplate all aspects regarding youth but mainly where they participate within formalized structures of care and education.
Day care centres are, by definition, the most difficult places to adapt. It is almost an existential issue for children to be together in order to learn from each other and they are necessary for parents in order for them to be economically productive. Our society is simply organised in such a way that, in return for productive parents, the care for children is largely outsourced to professional caretakers.
The problem of day care is twofold: by bringing them together in groups, they can contaminate each other, hence contaminate their respective families and act as a virus spreader. They can also contaminate the caretaker who, on average, will suffer more from the disease. There is a level of moral hazard where parents will be inclined to bring their children to day care with a fever or a cough because of work obligations. In the best possible circumstances, day care centres are a biological theatre of war already. Adding COVID-19 makes them nuclear wastelands. Worse, many day care centres are private homes owned and run by volunteers, and therefore difficult to adapt.
There will have to be extensive testing, not only of the children, but also of the parents and care takers. With the slightest doubt, children will not be admitted, and caretakers will have to work very hygienically, using masks, gloves, and face shields. In some circumstances, they might have to fall back on physical bubbles as shown before.
Major investments in infrastructure and assistance will be necessary, like ventilation systems and separate physical areas to such an extent that the voluntary nature of day care will probably disappear.
The centres will have to install an airlock type entrance in order to separate caretakers from parents and to (re)test before joining the others.
In larger day cares, children will be split in groups and will not have contact with the other groups, idem for their caretakers, in order to avoid cross-contamination. This is not different than in other work environments. If a child is diagnosed as being infected, it can be isolated in a physical bubble where it cannot infect others, and a caretaker can join it, after donning appropriate protective gear.
The same principle applies to the elementary school where children are still heavily dependent on their teacher’s guidance; you cannot avoid forming classes, but ways must be found to reduce close contact. During recreation, children will be able to play, but only with their classmates in order to avoid cross-contamination. Many schools will have to be adapted or change location because of the inability to realise this physical separation in the existing infrastructure.
In secondary school, as children grow older, become more independent and will have contact with others, it will be impossible to maintain this kind of group separation. The risks of contamination through back channel interactions are simply too large to avoid. The classrooms for the later years of primary education will be equipped with ventilation and purification systems and individual “pods” per child that are additionally protected with acrylic glass as you see now in supermarkets.
The teacher will remain, as much as possible, in a transparent, but shielded, space in front of the class. while traditional chalkboard may still be used, often, collaborative software will be used, where what the teacher writes on his tablet, will be transferred in real-time to the children’s tablets. When teachers have to help the kids, they will be protected by masks and face shields, or a physical bubble.
During later high school and college years, more and more young adults will choose to receive distance education that applies the principles of “guided learning”. Many kids will, provided the necessary adaptations, flourish if they are able to go through the learning content in their own rhythm instead of following the conventional course schedule on the teacher’s rhythm.
On the other hand, vulnerable young adults risk to drop off the radar and will have to be followed up closely. Therefore, and to allow social interaction, coming to school will still be made possible with the precautions above.
To accommodate this, classes can be divided in two groups: in turn, each group alternates between studying at home and studying in class.
However, for the weaker and more vulnerable groups, it is important that special monitoring and support measures must be put in place.
Part IV describes how our laws will change to cope with a pandemic environment and how the way governments will use the money creation process to pay for pandemic adaptation.
