The COVID-19 pandemic is unlike anything we have seen in a hundred years. The United States unemployment rate dramatically swung from the lowest on record to the highest on record in two months. States have shut down all non-essential businesses for weeks or even months depending on the individual state. Global trade has slowed to a trickle, and energy markets have been decimated. Every day, life for billions of people is marred by fear and peril because they are faced with a terrible dilemma: Do they venture outside and risk becoming deathly ill, or do they shelter at home and suffer dire economic hardship?
Like the pandemics and epidemics before it, COVID-19 will pass. We can take comfort in knowing that mankind possesses technologies and a wealth of knowledge previously not at its disposal. We also acknowledge that humanity faces unique challenges, mostly due to the world’s unprecedented level of globalization. What is almost certainly true: COVID-19 will have long term effects around the globe. But what future changes we should expect, and the speed of those changes, is a gigantic question mark.
But suppose we had a time machine and could travel five years into the future. What would the world look like in 2025?
Over the course of the next several weeks, JP Marvel will publish the series “2025: Long Term Effects of COVID-19”, an exploratory imagining of life in 2025, after COVID-19. Each series entry will provide a hypothetical 2025 reflection on the pandemic’s impact since 2020, focusing on a key aspect of American industry, commerce, government, society, or culture. The implied prognostications could prove either prophetic or false, but it is JP Marvel’s hope that “2025: Long Term Effects of COVID-19” will stimulate the investing intellects of our readers as they presently contemplate critical financial decisions.