Mapping out the societal & economic consequences of COVID-19

By Mike Jones, co-founder and managing partner of Science Inc.

Being home for the past few months, hunkered down with my family and social distancing, we’ve been witness to how COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on families, communities, industries, and countries. These range from micro problems (which store has toilet paper in stock) to macro long-term issues (what does this mean for the healthcare industry as a whole).

The very core and foundation of our societies has fumbled as it braces for long-term impact: our education systems, to small businesses like the restaurants frequent, to frontline medical workers who will surely endure emotional and psychological consequences in the future.

One night during stay-at-home orders, my wife Jennifer and I sat down at our kitchen table to talk through the ramifications this will have not just on us, but society as a whole, so we could try to begin to process. This conversation turned into my mapping out consequences into a database to bring some semblance of order to the headlines, data, information, and unknown variables rattling around in the margins of my mind.

I have my lens through which to see the world, while my wife has her own. Together, we couldn’t possibly think of every outcome. Therefore, we opened it up to our 11 and 15-year old children, and then our personal network, in order to get as much input as possible and create a real representation of what’s at stake.

My hope is that this time can be used to start thinking about fundamental changes so we can start coming up with solutions to the short and long-term problems we’re facing. There is a lot to digest, and a lot of dire circumstances, but there are a few silver linings. Studies show that there will be a reduction in vaping and an improvement in our environment; I understand these small positives don’t hold water to the negatives, but in these times, we’ll take what we can get.

Post Pandemic Impact on Education

As we saw with school districts closing in major cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, education systems will experience once of the largest impacts across all sectors.

We forecast that certain families will choose not to send their children back to school for a variety of reasons. This, in turn, will drive schools to have fewer students, thus lowering budgets and pushing down an already stressed educational system. The impact here may result in growth of homeschool programs and alternative schooling systems, students entering the workforce early, or students permanently dropping out of the education system.

Post Pandemic Impact on Retail & Brands & Commerce

We went through the retail apocalypse in 2017, when D2C brands moved in on traditional real estate and retail models. Many vacant storefronts haven’t been filled since that fallout. From my perspective as a startup investor, the current process to develop and launch a retail storefront startup is very expensive, slow, and complicated. If retail real estate holders want to attract new breeds of businesses that will in turn attract the GenZ consumer, we need a much faster way to onboard retail offerings that don’t involve 6 month lease negotiations with 5 year leases. Those days are done. To sum this up, retail-focused brands will likely suffer, and sadly many will be closed for good. Retail storefront landlords and owners need to reevaluate how they work with new tenants and businesses.

Post Pandemic Impact on Family & Society

I can’t comment on other families besides my own, but I’m sure we’ve all experienced a paradigm shift as kids and parents stay home full time. This begs the question — what about unhealthy home relationships and people who live alone? How are they dealing with these external forces? How does not going out regularly change your consumption patterns, your use of different substances, your friendships?

All this said, we’ll witness more kindness and global connectivity. Family situations can end up on polar opposite sides of the spectrum — they’ll either come out stronger or weaker — while single people may choose more social living environments due to loneliness following the pandemic.

Post Pandemic Impact on Events & Entertainment

In all cases we assume that people will shy away from dense social events in the near future. Concerts, theatre, church, festivals — space will be considered a premium and important for safety. The unknown remains how long will this last and what is a normal recovery timeline. In summary, there will be a very long impact around live events and large social gatherings (give or take a few outlier artists who have already staged maskless concerts). Newly released movies coming out on-demand in home might be the final blow to movie theaters as we know them.

Post Pandemic Impact on Gaming

Esports and Gaming have burst from the parameters of society to the mainstream of sports and entertainment. Couple gaming and quarantine, the net result is an industry climbing in numbers; video game usage has increased 75% during peak hours. These projections put the ecosystem on track to surpass $1B in revenue and maintain a strong momentum once COVID is over. We’ll see a strong presence growing in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Venture capitalists will be eyeing key growth areas, and we can expect gaming to be a part of public sports offerings, similar to basketball and football.

Post Pandemic Impact on Tourism & Real Estate

We are already hearing devastating impact from tourist-based economies such as Hawaii and Florida, and I surmise airlines will require a financial bailout. In all cases, this sector may require the longest recovery period. Based on submissions, many, if not most, small tourism-based countries will go out of business. This may result in a reemergence of road trip culture and a re-discovery of our national parks. Companies continuing to support remote work will have a wider base of employees that have a lower cost of living outside of major cities.

Post Pandemic Impact on Politics & Leadership & Military

Certain leaders are great from the get go while others require extreme situations to prove themselves as exceptional. Local cities and states are stepping up with their own rules to control the impact to their populations, and new voices are rising from unexpected places to guide our society through this journey. Because of COVID, new leaders will arise during this time of strife; crisis planning is real and needs to be accounted for.

Post Pandemic Impact on Work

Working from home will likely become the standard for many Americans. It’s interesting to see if companies will ever be able to not support an open work-from-home initiative in the future.

Workers may realize how much time they lost due to commuting and may not be willing to give it back. Work will never be the same, and remote work will need to be supported going forward, thereby even changing the very makeup and density of cities and commutes. This also affects those who use air travel for work. With more virtual meetings happening now more than ever, the need for being physically present loses its importance. This will have a great influence on the travel industry — some airlines will likely close, hotels will remain empty for a long time after this is over, and a portion of business travel will likely never return as companies will likely stop paying for that travel.

Even though we’ve been battling the pandemic since March, its influence is just the beginning. Everyone has an opinion, and I don’t have all of the answers. What I do know is we cannot wait to start thinking of solutions.

We are opening the database up to you. The more voices we have here, the better we can prepare for what’s to come after, especially as we see a spike in cases across the country. If you’d like to contribute your thoughts, please email us, preferably in the template provided here — then send to me at mjones@science-inc.com.

Together, we can begin solving the damage.