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THE F R I D AY COVER

Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How.

A crisis on this scale can reorder society in dramatic ways, for better or worse. Here are 34 big thinkers’ predictions for

what’s to come.

Illustration by DAQ

By POLITICO MAGAZINE

03/19/2020 07:30 PM EDT

For many Americans right now, the scale of the coronavirus crisis calls to
mind 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis—events that reshaped society in
lasting ways, from how we travel and buy homes, to the level of security
and surveillance we’re accustomed to, and even to the language we use.

Politico Magazine surveyed more than 30 smart, macro thinkers this

week, and they have some news for you: Buckle in. This could be bigger.

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A global, novel virus that keeps us contained in our homes—maybe for

months—is already reorienting our relationship to government, to the
outside world, even to each other. Some changes these experts expect to
see in the coming months or years might feel unfamiliar or unsettling:
Will nations stay closed? Will touch become taboo? What will become of
restaurants?

But crisis moments also present opportunity: more sophisticated and

flexible use of technology, less polarization, a revived appreciation for
the outdoors and life’s other simple pleasures. No one knows exactly
what will come, but here is our best stab at a guide to the unknown ways
that society—government, healthcare, the economy, our lifestyles and
more—will change.

Click on a subject to skip straight to its entries.

Community Tech Health / Science Government Elections
 The Global Economy Lifestyle

COMMUNITY

The personal becomes

dangerous.
Deborah Tannen is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown
and author, most recently, of You’re the Only One I Can Tell:
Inside the Language of Women’s Friendships.

On 9/11, Americans discovered we are vulnerable to calamities

we thought only happened in distant lands. The 2008 financial
crisis told us we also can suffer the calamities of past eras, like
the economic meltdown of the Great Depression. Now, the 1918
flu pandemic is a sudden specter in our lives.

This loss of innocence, or complacency, is a new way of being-in-

the-world that we can expect to change our doing-in-the-world.
We know now that touching things, being with other people and
breathing the air in an enclosed space can be risky. How quickly
that awareness recedes will be different for different people, but
it can never vanish completely for anyone who lived through
this year. It could become second nature to recoil from shaking
hands or touching our faces—and we might all find we can’t stop
washing our hands.

The comfort of being in the presence of others might be replaced

by a greater comfort with absence, especially with those we
don’t know intimately. Instead of asking, “Is there a reason to do
this online?” we’ll be asking, “Is there any good reason to do this
in person?”—and might need to be reminded and convinced that
there is. Unfortunately, if unintendedly, those without easy
access to broadband will be further disadvantaged. The paradox
of online communication will be ratcheted up: It creates more
distance, yes, but also more connection, as we communicate
more often with people who are physically farther and farther
away—and who feel safer to us because of that distance.

A new kind of patriotism.

Mark Lawrence Schrad is an associate professor of
political science and author of the forthcoming Smashing
the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition.

America has long equated patriotism with the armed forces. But
you can’t shoot a virus. Those on the frontlines against
coronavirus aren’t conscripts, mercenaries or enlisted men; they
are our doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, caregivers, store
clerks, utility workers, small-business owners and employees.
Like Li Wenliang and the doctors of Wuhan, many are suddenly
saddled with unfathomable tasks, compounded by an increased
risk of contamination and death they never signed up for.

When all is said and done, perhaps we will recognize their

sacrifice as true patriotism, saluting our doctors and nurses,
genuflecting and saying, “Thank you for your service,” as we
now do for military veterans. We will give them guaranteed
health benefits and corporate discounts, and build statues and
have holidays for this new class of people who sacrifice their
health and their lives for ours. Perhaps, too, we will finally start
to understand patriotism more as cultivating the health and life
of your community, rather than blowing up someone else’s
community. Maybe the de-militarization of American patriotism
and love of community will be one of the benefits to come out of
this whole awful mess.

A decline in polarization.
Peter T. Coleman is a professor of psychology at Columbia
University who studies intractable con ict. His next book,
The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization, will be
released in 2021.

The extraordinary shock(s) to our system that the coronavirus

pandemic is bringing has the potential to break America out of
the 50-plus year pattern of escalating political and cultural
polarization we have been trapped in, and help us to change
course toward greater national solidarity and functionality. It
might sound idealistic, but there are two reasons to think it can
happen.

The first is the “common enemy” scenario, in which people begin

to look past their differences when faced with a shared external
threat. COVID-19 is presenting us with a formidable enemy that
will not distinguish between reds and blues, and might provide
us with fusion-like energy and a singularity of purpose to help us
reset and regroup. During the Blitz, the 56-day Nazi bombing
campaign against the Britain, Winston Churchill’s cabinet was
amazed and heartened to witness the ascendance of human
goodness—altruism, compassion and generosity of spirit and
action.

The second reason is the “political shock wave” scenario. Studies

have shown that strong, enduring relational patterns often
become more susceptible to change after some type of major
shock destabilizes them. This doesn’t necessarily happen right
away, but a study of 850 enduring inter-state conflicts that
occurred between 1816 to 1992 found that more than 75 percent
of them ended within 10 years of a major destabilizing shock.
Societal shocks can break different ways, making things better
or worse. But given our current levels of tension, this scenario
suggests that now is the time to begin to promote more
constructive patterns in our cultural and political discourse. The
time for change is clearly ripening.

A return to faith in serious

experts.
Tom Nichols is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College
and author of The Death of Expertise.

America for several years has become a fundamentally

unserious country. This is the luxury afforded us by peace,
affluence and high levels of consumer technology. We didn’t
have to think about the things that once focused our minds—
nuclear war, oil shortages, high unemployment, skyrocketing
interest rates. Terrorism has receded back to being a kind of
notional threat for which we dispatch volunteers in our military
to the far corners of the desert as the advance guard of the
homeland. We even elevated a reality TV star to the presidency
as a populist attack on the bureaucracy and expertise that makes
most of the government function on a day to day basis.

The COVID-19 crisis could change this in two ways. First, it has
already forced people back to accepting that expertise matters. It
was easy to sneer at experts until a pandemic arrived, and then
people wanted to hear from medical professionals like Anthony
 Fauci. Second, it may—one might hope—return Americans to a
new seriousness, or at least move them back toward the idea
that government is a matter for serious people. The colossal
failure of the Trump administration both to keep Americans
healthy and to slow the pandemic-driven implosion of the
economy might shock the public enough back to insisting on
something from government other than emotional satisfaction.

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Less individualism.
Eric Klinenberg is professor of sociology and director of
the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.
He is the author, most recently, of Palaces for the People:
How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality,
Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.

The coronavirus pandemic marks the end of our romance with

market society and hyper-individualism. We could turn toward
authoritarianism. Imagine President Donald Trump trying to
suspend the November election. Consider the prospect of a
military crackdown. The dystopian scenario is real. But I believe
we will go in the other direction. We’re now seeing the market-
based models for social organization fail, catastrophically, as
self-seeking behavior (from Trump down) makes this crisis so
much more dangerous than it needed to be.

When this ends, we will reorient our politics and make

substantial new investments in public goods—for health,
especially—and public services. I don’t think we will become less
communal. Instead, we will be better able to see how our fates
are linked. The cheap burger I eat from a restaurant that denies
paid sick leave to its cashiers and kitchen staff makes me more
vulnerable to illness, as does the neighbor who refuses to stay
home in a pandemic because our public school failed to teach
him science or critical thinking skills. The economy—and the
social order it helps support—will collapse if the government
doesn’t guarantee income for the millions of workers who will
lose their jobs in a major recession or depression. Young adults
will fail to launch if government doesn’t help reduce or cancel
their student debt. The coronavirus pandemic is going to cause
immense pain and suffering. But it will force us to reconsider
who we are and what we value, and, in the long run, it could
help us rediscover the better version of ourselves.

Religious worship will look

di erent.
Amy Sullivan is director of strategy for Vote Common
Good.

We are an Easter people, many Christians are fond of saying,

emphasizing the triumph of hope and life over fear. But how do
an Easter people observe their holiest day if they cannot rejoice
together on Easter morning? How do Jews celebrate their
deliverance from bondage when Passover Seders must take
place on Zoom, with in-laws left to wonder whether Cousin Joey
forgot the Four Questions or the internet connection merely
froze? Can Muslim families celebrate Ramadan if they cannot
visit local mosques for Tarawih prayers or gather with loved
ones to break the fast?

All faiths have dealt with the challenge of keeping faith alive
under the adverse conditions of war or diaspora or persecution
—but never all faiths at the same time. Religion in the time of
quarantine will challenge conceptions of what it means to
minister and to fellowship. But it will also expand the
opportunities for those who have no local congregation to
sample sermons from afar. Contemplative practices may gain
popularity. And maybe—just maybe—the culture war that has
branded those who preach about the common good with the
epithet “Social Justice Warriors” may ease amid the very present
reminder of our interconnected humanity.

New forms of reform.

Jonathan Rauch is a contributing writer at the Atlantic and
a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

One group of Americans has lived through a transformational

epidemic in recent memory: gay men. Of course, HIV/AIDS was
(and is) different in all kinds of ways from coronavirus, but one
lesson is likely to apply: Plagues drive change. Partly because
 our government failed us, gay Americans mobilized to build
organizations, networks and know-how that changed our place
in society and have enduring legacies today. The epidemic also
revealed deadly flaws in the health care system, and it awakened
us to the need for the protection of marriage—revelations which
led to landmark reforms. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some
analogous changes in the wake of coronavirus. People are
finding new ways to connect and support each other in
adversity; they are sure to demand major changes in the health-
care system and maybe also the government; and they’ll become
newly conscious of interdependency and community. I can’t
predict the precise effects, but I’m sure we'll be seeing them for
years.

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TECH

Regulatory barriers to online

tools will fall.
Katherine Mangu-Ward is editor-in-chief of Reason
magazine.

COVID-19 will sweep away many of the artificial barriers to

moving more of our lives online. Not everything can become
virtual, of course. But in many areas of our lives, uptake on
genuinely useful online tools has been slowed by powerful
legacy players, often working in collaboration with overcautious
bureaucrats. Medicare allowing billing for telemedicine was a
long-overdue change, for instance, as was revisiting HIPAA to
permit more medical providers to use the same tools the rest of
us use every day to communicate, such as Skype, Facetime and
email. The regulatory bureaucracy might well have dragged its
feet on this for many more years if not for this crisis. The
resistance—led by teachers’ unions and the politicians beholden
to them—to allowing partial homeschooling or online learning
for K-12 kids has been swept away by necessity. It will be near-
impossible to put that genie back in the bottle in the fall, with
many families finding that they prefer full or partial
homeschooling or online homework. For many college students,
returning to an expensive dorm room on a depopulated campus
will not be appealing, forcing massive changes in a sector that
has been ripe for innovation for a long time. And while not
every job can be done remotely, many people are learning that
the difference between having to put on a tie and commute for
an hour or working efficiently at home was always just the
ability to download one or two apps plus permission from their
boss. Once companies sort out their remote work dance steps, it
will be harder—and more expensive—to deny employees those
options. In other words, it turns out, an awful lot of meetings
(and doctors’ appointments and classes) really could have been
an email. And now they will be.
A healthier digital lifestyle.
Sherry Turkle is professor of the social studies of science
and technology at MIT, founding director of the MIT
Initiative on Technology and Self, and author, most recently,
of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital
Age.

Perhaps we can use our time with our devices to rethink the
kinds of community we can create through them. In the earliest
days of our coronavirus social distancing, we have seen
inspirational first examples. Cello master Yo-Yo Ma posts a daily
live concert of a song that sustains him. Broadway diva Laura
Benanti invites performers from high school musicals who are
not going to put on those shows to send their performances to
her. She’ll be watching; Lin-Manuel Miranda joins the campaign
and promises to watch as well. Entrepreneurs offer time to listen
to pitches. Master yoga instructors teach free classes. This is a
different life on the screen from disappearing into a video game
or polishing one’s avatar. This is breaking open a medium with
human generosity and empathy. This is looking within and
asking: “What can I authentically offer? I have a life, a history.
What do people need?” If, moving forward, we apply our most
human instincts to our devices, that will have been a powerful
COVID-19 legacy. Not only alone together, but together alone.

A boon to virtual reality.

Elizabeth Bradley is president of Vassar College and a
scholar of global health.
 VR allows us to have the experiences we want even if we have to
be isolated, quarantined or alone. Maybe that will be how we
adapt and stay safe in the next outbreak. I would like to see a VR
program that helped with the socialization and mental health of
people who had to self-isolate. Imagine putting on glasses, and
suddenly you are in a classroom or another communal setting,
or even a positive psychology intervention.

HEALTH/SCIENCE

The rise of telemedicine.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel is chair of the department of medical
ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

The pandemic will shift the paradigm of where our healthcare

delivery takes place. For years, telemedicine has lingered on the
sidelines as a cost-controlling, high convenience system. Out of
necessity, remote office visits could skyrocket in popularity as
traditional-care settings are overwhelmed by the pandemic.
There would also be containment-related benefits to this shift;
staying home for a video call keeps you out of the transit system,
out of the waiting room and, most importantly, away from
patients who need critical care.
An opening for stronger family
care.
Ai-Jen Poo is director of the National Domestic Workers
Alliance and Caring Across Generations.

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed gaping holes in our care

infrastructure, as millions of American families have been
forced to navigate this crisis without a safety net. With loved
ones sick and children suddenly home from school indefinitely,
they’ve been forced to make impossible choices among their
families, their health and financial ruin. After all, meaningful
child care assistance is extremely limited, access to long-term
care is piecemeal at best, and too few workers have access to
paid family and medical leave, which means that missed work
means missed pay.

This crisis should unleash widespread political support for

Universal Family Care—a single public federal fund that we all
contribute to, that we all benefit from, that helps us take care of
our families while we work, from child care and elder care to
support for people with disabilities and paid family leave.
Coronavirus has put a particular national spotlight on unmet
needs of the growing older population in our country, and the
tens of millions of overstretched family and professional
caregivers they rely on. Care is and always has been a shared
responsibility. Yet, our policy has never fully supported it. This
moment, challenging as it is, should jolt us into changing that.

Government becomes Big

Pharma.
Steph Sterling is vice president of advocacy and policy at
the Roosevelt Institute, and co-author of the forthcoming
paper “In the Public Interest: Democratizing Medicines
through Public Ownership.”

The coronavirus has laid bare the failures of our costly,

inefficient, market-based system for developing, researching and
manufacturing medicines and vaccines. COVID-19 is one of
several coronavirus outbreaks we have seen over the past 20
years, yet the logic of our current system—a range of costly
government incentives intended to stimulate private-sector
development—has resulted in the 18-month window we now
anticipate before widespread vaccine availability. Private
pharmaceutical firms simply will not prioritize a vaccine or
other countermeasure for a future public health emergency
until its profitability is assured, and that is far too late to prevent
mass disruption. The reality of fragile supply chains for active
pharmaceutical ingredients coupled with public outrage over
patent abuses that limit the availability of new treatments has
led to an emerging, bipartisan consensus that the public sector
must take far more active and direct responsibility for the
development and manufacture of medicines. That more efficient,
far more resilient government approach will replace our failed,
40-year experiment with market-based incentives to meet
essential health needs.

Science reigns again.

Sonja Trauss is executive director of YIMBY Law.

Truth and its most popular emissary, science, have been

declining in credibility for more than a generation. As Obi-Wan
 Kenobi told us in Return of the Jedi, “You’re going to find that
many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point
of view.” In 2005, long before Donald Trump, Stephen Colbert
coined the term “truthiness” to describe the increasingly fact-lite
political discourse. The oil and gas industry has been waging a
decades-long war against truth and science, following up on the
same effort waged by the tobacco industry. Altogether, this led to
the situation in which the Republicans could claim that the
reports about the coronavirus weren’t science at all, but mere
politics, and this sounded reasonable to millions of people.
Quickly, however, Americans are being reacquainted with
scientific concepts like germ theory and exponential growth.
Unlike with tobacco use or climate change, science doubters will
be able to see the impacts of the coronavirus immediately. At
least for the next 35 years, I think we can expect that public
respect for expertise in public health and epidemics to be at least
partially restored.

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GOVERNMENT
Congress can nally go virtual.
Ethan Zuckerman is associate professor of the practice in
media arts and sciences at MIT, director of the Center for
Civic Media and author of Digital Cosmopolitans: Why We
Think the Internet Connects Us, Why It Doesn't, and How to
Rewire It.

Coronavirus is going to force many institutions to go virtual. One

that would greatly benefit from the change is the U.S. Congress.
We need Congress to continue working through this crisis, but
given advice to limit gatherings to 10 people or fewer, meeting
on the floor of the House of Representatives is not an especially
wise option right now; at least two members of Congress already
have tested positive for the virus.

Instead, this is a great time for congresspeople to return to their

districts and start the process of virtual legislating—
permanently. Not only is this move medically necessary at the
moment, but it has ancillary benefits. Lawmakers will be closer
to the voters they represent and more likely to be sensitive to
local perspectives and issues. A virtual Congress is harder to
lobby, as the endless parties and receptions that lobbyists throw
in Washington will be harder to replicate across the whole
nation. Party conformity also might loosen with representatives
remembering local loyalties over party ties.

In the long run, a virtualized Congress might help us tackle one

of the great problems of the contemporary House of
Representatives: reapportionment and expansion. The House
has not grown meaningfully in size since the 1920s, which
means that a representative, on average, speaks for 770,000
constituents, rather than the 30,000 the Founding Fathers
mandated. If we demonstrate that a virtual Congress can do its
job as well or better using 21st-century technologies, rather than
18th-century ones, perhaps we could return the house to the
30,000:1 ratio George Washington prescribed.

Big government makes a

comeback.
Margaret O’Mara is a professor of history at University of
Washington and author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the
Remaking of America.

The battle against the coronavirus already has made

government—federal, state and local—far more visible to
Americans than it normally has been. As we tune in to daily
briefings from public health officials, listen for guidance from
our governors, and seek help and hope from our national
leaders, we are seeing the critical role that “big government”
plays in our lives and our health. We also see the deadly
consequences of four decades of disinvestment in public
infrastructure and dismissal of public expertise. Not only will
America need a massive dose of big government to get out of this
crisis—as Washington’s swift passage of a giant economic bailout
package reflects—but we will need big, and wise, government
more than ever in its aftermath.

Government service regains its

cachet.
Lilliana Mason is an associate professor of government and
politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and
author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our
Identity.

The Reagan era is over. The widely accepted idea that

government is inherently bad won’t persist after coronavirus.
This event is global evidence that a functioning government is
crucial for a healthy society. It is no longer “terrifying” to hear
the words “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” In
fact, that is what most people are desperately hoping to hear
right now. We will see a rebirth of the patriotic honor of working
for the government.

A new civic federalism.

Archon Fung is professor of citizenship and self-
government at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy
School of Government.

Just as the trauma of fighting World War II laid the foundations

for a stronger American government and national solidarity, the
coronavirus crisis might sow the seeds of a new civic federalism,
in which states and localities become centers of justice,
solidarity and far-sighted democratic problem-solving. Many
Americans now bemoan the failure of national leadership in the
face of this unprecedented challenge. When we look back, we
will see that some communities handled the crisis much better
than others. We might well find that success came in states
where government, civic and private-sector leaders joined their
strengths together in a spirit of self-sacrifice for the common
good.

Consider that the virology lab at the University of Washington

far surpassed the CDC and others in bringing substantial COVID-
19 testing early, when it was most needed. Some governors,
mayors, education authorities and employers have led the way
by enforcing social distancing, closing campuses and other
places, and channeling resources to support the most vulnerable.
And the civic fabric of some communities has fostered the
responsibility and altruism of millions of ordinary citizens who
have stayed home, lost income, kept their kids inside, self-
quarantined, refrained from hoarding, supported each other,
and even pooled medical supplies and other resources to bolster
health workers. The coronavirus is this century’s most urgent
challenge to humanity. Harnessing a new sense of solidarity,
citizens of states and cities will rise to face the enormous
challenges ahead such as climate change and transforming our
era of historic inequality into one of economic inclusion.

The rules we’ve lived by won’t all

apply.
Astra Taylor is a lmmaker and author of Democracy May
Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone.

America’s response to coronavirus pandemic has revealed a

simple truth: So many policies that our elected officials have long
told us were impossible and impractical were eminently possible
and practical all along. In 2011, when Occupy Wall Street
activists demanded debt cancellation for student loans and
medical debt, they were laughed at by many in the mainstream
 media. In the intervening years, we have continued to push the
issue and have consistently been told our demands were
unrealistic. Now, we know that the “rules” we have lived under
were unnecessary, and simply made society more brittle and
unequal.

All along, evictions were avoidable; the homeless could’ve been

housed and sheltered in government buildings; water and
electricity didn’t need to be turned off for people behind on their
bills; paid sick leave could‘ve been a right for all workers; paying
your mortgage late didn’t need to lead to foreclosure; and
debtors could’ve been granted relief. President Donald Trump
has already put a freeze on interest for federal student loans,
while New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has paused all
medical and student debt owed to New York State. Democrats
and Republicans are discussing suspending collection on—or
outright canceling—student loans as part of a larger economic
stimulus package.

It’s clear that in a crisis, the rules don’t apply—which makes you
wonder why they are rules in the first place. This is an
unprecedented opportunity to not just hit the pause button and
temporarily ease the pain, but to permanently change the rules
so that untold millions of people aren’t so vulnerable to begin
with.

CORONAVIRUS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

The House passed a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package that will give immediate assistance

to many Americans, small businesses and major industries near collapse.

Confirmed U.S. Cases: 103,942 | U.S. Deaths: 1,689

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Revived trust in institutions.

Michiko Kakutani is author of the 2018 bestseller The
Death of Truth and former chief book critic of the New
York Times.

The coronavirus pandemic, one hopes, will jolt Americans into a

realization that the institutions and values Donald Trump has
spent his presidency assailing are essential to the functioning of
a democracy—and to its ability to grapple effectively with a
national crisis. A recognition that government institutions—
including those entrusted with protecting our health, preserving
our liberties and overseeing our national security—need to be
staffed with experts (not political loyalists), that decisions need
to be made through a reasoned policy process and predicated on
evidence-based science and historical and geopolitical
knowledge (not on Trump-ian “alternative facts,” political
expediency or what Thomas Pynchon called, in Gravity’s
Rainbow, “a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all-
round assholery”). Instead of Trump’s “America First” foreign
policy, we need to return to multilateral diplomacy, and to the
understanding that co-operation with allies—and adversaries,
too—is especially necessary when it comes to dealing with global
problems like climate change and viral pandemics.

Most of all, we need to remember that public trust is crucial to

governance—and that trust depends on telling the truth. As the
historian John M. Barry wrote in his 2004 book The Great
Influenza—a harrowing chronicle of the 1918 flu pandemic,
which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide—the
 main lesson from that catastrophe is that “those in authority
must retain the public’s trust” and “the way to do that is to
distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to
manipulate no one.”

Expect a political uprising.

Cathy O’Neil is founder and CEO of the algorithmic
auditing company ORCAA and author of Weapons of Math
Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and
Threatens Democracy.

The aftermath of the coronavirus is likely to include a new

political uprising—an Occupy Wall Street 2.0, but this time much
more massive and angrier. Once the health emergency is over,
we will see the extent to which rich, well-connected and well-
resourced communities will have been taken care of, while
contingent, poor and stigmatized communities will have been
thoroughly destroyed. Moreover, we will have seen how political
action is possible—multitrillion dollar bailouts and projects can
be mobilized quickly—but only if the cause is considered urgent.
This mismatch of long-disregarded populations finally getting
the message that their needs are not only chronically
unattended, but also chronically dismissed as politically
required, will likely have drastic, pitchfork consequences.

ELECTIONS
Electronic voting goes
mainstream.
Joe Brotherton is chairman of Democracy Live, a startup
that provides electronic ballots.

One victim of COVID-19 will be the old model of limiting voting

to polling places where people must gather in close proximity for
an extended period of time. We have been gradually moving
away from this model since 2010, when Congress passed a law
requiring electronic balloting for military and overseas voters,
and some states now require accessible at-home voting for blind
and disabled voters. Over the long term, as election officials
grapple with how to allow for safe voting in the midst of a
pandemic, the adoption of more advanced technology—
including secure, transparent, cost-effective voting from our
mobile devices—is more likely. In the near-term, a hybrid model
—mobile-phone voting with paper ballots for tabulation—is
emerging in the 2020 election cycle in certain jurisdictions. We
should expect that option to become more widespread. To be
clear, proven technologies now exist that offer mobile, at-home
voting while still generating paper ballots. This system is not an
idea; it is a reality that has been used in more than 1,000
elections for nearly a decade by our overseas military and
disabled voters. This should be the new normal.

Election Day will become

Election Month.
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow at New America and author
of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for
Multiparty Democracy in America.

How do we hold an election in the time of coronavirus? By

making it easier to vote when citizens want and where they
want, so that Election Day doesn’t become a health risk of big
crowds and long lines. The change will come through expanded
early voting and no-excuse mail-in balloting, effectively turning
Election Day into Election Month (or maybe months, depending
on the closeness of the election and the leniency for late-arriving
ballots postmarked on Election Day). This transition requires
considerable thought and planning to ensure that all
communities are treated equally, and to prevent fraud. But
facing the prospect of crowded polling places staffed by at-risk
poll workers (who tend to be older), states will come under
tremendous pressure to develop plans so that the election can go
on regardless. This will mark a permanent change. Once citizens
experience the convenience of early voting and/or voting by
mail, they won’t want to give it up. More convenience will
generate higher voter turnout, potentially transforming partisan
competition in America.

Voting by mail will become the

norm.
Kevin R. Kosar is vice president of research partnerships at
the R Street Institute.

To date, five states—Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland and

Ohio—have postponed their presidential primaries. More states
may well follow. But these elections cannot be put off
indefinitely. Parties need to hold their conventions and select a
presidential nominee before the autumn general election. The
coronavirus might, according to some reports, continue to
menace Americans through June or even the end of summer. In
most states, this means elections policy is inviting an electoral
train wreck. The clock is ticking.

Fortunately, there is a time-tested means for the country to

escape the choice between protecting public health and allowing
voters to exercise their right to vote: voting by mail. Military
members overseas have voted by mail for decades. Some states,
such as Washington, Oregon and Utah, already let everyone vote
at home. They send every voter a ballot and then let them choose
to cast it either via mail or at a polling place. Unfortunately, most
states have set the toggle to voting in-person and requiring
individuals to request to vote by mail. Voters already receive
registration cards and elections guides by mail. Why not ballots?
Given the risks that in-person voting poses, states now have
urgent cause to move immediately to modernize their
hidebound systems—and we should soon expect them to.

Dale Ho is director of the Voting Rights Project at the

American Civil Liberties Union.

The COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented threat to the

way that most people vote: in person on Election Day. But there
are several obvious steps we can take to ensure that no one has
to choose between their health and their right to vote.

First, every eligible voter should be mailed a ballot and a self-

sealing return envelope with prepaid postage. All ballots
postmarked by Election Day should be accepted and counted.
Ballots cast by mail should not be discarded based on errors or
technicalities without first notifying voters of any defects and
giving them an opportunity to correct them. At the same time,
 states can preserve in-person voting opportunities for people
who need them—such as voters with disabilities, with limited
English proficiency, with limited postal access or who register
after mail-in ballots have been sent out.

Elections administrators should receive extra resources to

recruit younger poll workers, to ensure their and in-person
voters’ health and safety, and to expand capacity to quickly and
accurately process what will likely be an unprecedented volume
of mail-in votes. Moreover, states should eliminate restrictions
prohibiting elections officials from processing mail-in ballots
until Election Day (15 states currently have such restrictions).
And the media should help set public expectations that, in an
environment with record levels of mail-in voting, tabulating
results and forecasting winners may take longer than we have
grown accustomed to.

If a state cannot do all of the above, it should take as many of

these steps as possible. The current crisis makes these changes
all the more necessary—and all the more likely to happen.

THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

More restraints on mass

consumption.
Sonia Shah is author of Pandemic: Tracking Contagions
From Cholera to Ebola and Beyond and the forthcoming
The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on
the Move.

In the best-case scenario, the trauma of the pandemic will force

society to accept restraints on mass consumer culture as a
reasonable price to pay to defend ourselves against future
contagions and climate disasters alike. For decades, we’ve sated
our outsized appetites by encroaching on an ever-expanding
swath of the planet with our industrial activities, forcing wild
species to cram into remaining fragments of habitat in closer
proximity to ours. That’s what has allowed animal microbes
such as SARS-COV2—not to mention hundreds of others from
Ebola to Zika—to cross over into human bodies, causing
epidemics. In theory, we could decide to shrink our industrial
footprint and conserve wildlife habitat, so that animal microbes
stay in animals’ bodies, instead. More likely, we’ll see less
directly relevant transformations. Universal basic income and
mandatory paid sick leave will move from the margins to the
center of policy debates. The end of mass quarantine will
unleash pent-up demand for intimacy and a mini baby-boom.
The hype around online education will be abandoned, as a
generation of young people forced into seclusion will reshape
the culture around a contrarian appreciation for communal life.

Stronger domestic supply chains.

Todd N. Tucker is director of Governance Studies at the
Roosevelt Institute.

In the ancient days of 2018, the Trump administration was

panned by experts for imposing tariffs on imported steel on a
global basis for national security reasons. As the president
tweeted at the time, “IF YOU DON’T HAVE STEEL, YOU DON’T
HAVE A COUNTRY!” But to most economists, China was the real
reason for disruptions in the metal market, and imposing tariffs
additionally on U.S. allies was nonsensical, the argument went:
After all, even if America lost its steel industry altogether, we
would still be able to count on supplies from allies in North
America and Europe.

Fast forward to 2020. Just this week, U.S. allies are considering
substantial border restrictions, including shutting down ports
and restricting exports. While there’s no indication that the
coronavirus per se is being transmitted through commerce, one
can imagine a perfect storm in which deep recessions plus
mounting geopolitical tensions limit America’s access to its
normal supply chains and the lack of homegrown capacity in
various product markets limits the government’s ability to
respond nimbly to threats. Reasonable people can differ over
whether Trump’s steel tariffs were the right response at the right
time. In the years ahead, however, expect to see more support
from Democrats, Republicans, academics and diplomats for the
notion that government has a much bigger role to play in
creating adequate redundancy in supply chains—resilient even
to trade shocks from allies. This will be a substantial
reorientation from even the very recent past.

Dambisa Moyo is an economist and author.

The coronavirus pandemic will create move pressure on

corporations to weigh the efficiency and costs/benefits of a
globalized supply chain system against the robustness of a
domestic-based supply chain. Switching to a more robust
domestic supply chain would reduce dependence on an
increasingly fractured global supply system. But while this
would better ensure that people get the goods they need, this
shift would likely also increase costs to corporations and
consumers.

The inequality gap will widen.

Theda Skocpol is professor of government and sociology at
Harvard.

Discussions of inequality in America often focus on the growing

gap between the bottom 99 percent and the top 1 percent. But
the other gap that has grown is between the top fifth and all the
rest—and that gap will be exacerbated by this crisis.

The wealthiest fifth of Americans have made greater income

gains than those below them in the income hierarchy in recent
decades. They are more often members of married, highly
educated couples. As high-salary professionals or managers, they
live in Internet-ready homes that will accommodate
telecommuting—and where children have their own bedrooms
and aren’t as disruptive to a work-from-home schedule. In this
crisis, most will earn steady incomes while having necessities
delivered to their front doors.

The other 80 percent of Americans lack that financial cushion.

Some will be OK, but many will struggle with job losses and
family burdens. They are more likely to be single parents or
single-income households. They’re less able to work from home,
and more likely employed in the service or delivery sectors, in
jobs that put them at greater danger of coming into contact with
the coronavirus. In many cases, their children will not gain
educationally at home, because parents will not be able to teach
 them, or their households might lack access to the high-speed
Internet that enables remote instruction.

LIFESTYLE

A hunger for diversion.

Mary Frances Berry is professor of American social
thought, history and Africana Studies at the University of
Pennsylvania.

Some trends already underway will probably accelerate—for

example, using voice technology to control entryways, security
and the like. In the short term, universities will add courses on
pandemics, and scientists will devise research projects to
improve forecasting, treatment and diagnosis. But history
suggests another outcome, as well. After the disastrous 1918-19
Spanish flu and the end of World War I, many Americans sought
carefree entertainment, which the introduction of cars and the
radio facilitated. Young women newly able to vote under the
19th Amendment bobbed their hair, frequented speakeasies and
danced the Charleston. The economy quickly rebounded and
flourished for about 10 years, until irrational investment tilted
the United States and the world into the Great Depression.
Probably, given past behavior, when this pandemic is over,
human beings will respond with the same sense of relief and a
search for community, relief from stress and pleasure.
Less communal dining—but
maybe more cooking.
Paul Freedman is a history professor at Yale and author,
most recently, of American Cuisine: And How It Got This
Way.

For the past few years, Americans have spent more money on
food prepared outside the home than on buying and making
their meals. But, now, with restaurants mostly closed and as
isolation increases, many people will learn or relearn how to
cook over the next weeks. Maybe they will fall back in love with
cooking, though I won’t hold my breath, or perhaps delivery will
triumph over everything else. Sit-down restaurants also could
close permanently as people frequent them less; it is likely there
will be many fewer sit-down restaurants in Europe and the
United States. We will be less communal at least for a while.

A revival of parks.
Alexandra Lange is the architecture critic at Curbed.

People often see parks as a destination for something specific,

like soccer fields, barbecues or playgrounds, and all of those
functions must now be avoided. But that doesn’t make the parks
any less valuable. I’m sheltering in place in Brooklyn with my
family, and every day, the one time we go outside is to walk a
loop north through Brooklyn Bridge Park and south down the
Brooklyn Heights Promenade. I’m seeing people asking Golden
Gate Park to close the roads so there’s even more space for
people. In Britain, the National Trust is trying to open more
gardens and parks for free. Urban parks—in which most major
cities have made significant investments over the past decade—
are big enough to accommodate both crowds and social
distancing. It helps that it is spring in the northern hemisphere.

Society might come out of the pandemic valuing these big spaces
even more, not only as the backdrop to major events and active
uses, but as an opportunity to be together visually. I’ve been
writing a book about shopping malls, and I would certainly not
recommend a visit right now (all those virus-carrying surfaces).
But, in suburban communities, malls have historically served the
same function: somewhere to go, somewhere to be together.
What we have right now is parks. After this is all over, I would
love to see more public investment in open, accessible, all-
weather places to gather, even after we no longer need to stay
six feet apart.

A change in our understanding

of ‘change.’
Matthew Continetti is a resident fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute.

“Paradigm shift” is among the most overused phrases in

journalism. Yet the coronavirus pandemic may be one case
where it applies. American society is familiar with a specific
model of change, operating within the existing parameters of
our liberal democratic institutions, mostly free market and
society of expressive individualism. But the coronavirus doesn’t
just attack the immune system. Like the Civil War, Great
Depression and World War II, it has the potential to infect the
foundations of free society. State and local government are
moving at varying and sometimes contrary speeds to address a
crisis of profound dimensions. The global economy has entered
the opening stages of a recession that has the potential to
become a depression. Already, large parts of America have shut
down entirely. Americans have said goodbye to a society of
frivolity and ceaseless activity in a flash, and the federal
government is taking steps more often seen during wartime. Our
collective notions of the possible have changed already. If the
danger the coronavirus poses both to individual health and to
public health capacity persists, we will be forced to revise our
very conception of “change.” The paradigm will shift.

The tyranny of habit no more.

Virginia He ernan is author of Magic and Loss: The
Internet as Art.

Humans are not generally disposed to radical departures from

their daily rounds. But the recent fantasy of “optimizing” a life—
for peak performance, productivity, efficiency—has created a
cottage industry that tries to make the dreariest possible lives
sound heroic. Jordan Peterson has been commanding lost male
souls to make their beds for years now. The Four-Hour
Workweek, The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits urge readers
to automate certain behaviors to keep them dutifully
overworking and under-eating.

But COVID-19 suggests that Peterson (or any other habit-

preaching martinet) is not the leader for our time. Instead,
 consider Albert Camus, who, in The Plague, blames the
obliteration of a fictional Algerian town by an epidemic on one
thing: consistency. “The truth is,” Camus writes of the crushingly
dull port town, “everyone is bored, and devotes himself to
cultivating habits.” The habit-bound townspeople lack
imagination. It takes them far too long to take in that death is
stalking them, and it’s past time to stop taking the streetcar,
working for money, bowling and going to the movies.

Maybe, as in Camus’ time, it will take the dual specters of

autocracy and disease to get us to listen to our common sense,
our imaginations, our eccentricities—and not our programming.
A more expansive and braver approach to everyday existence is
now crucial so that we don’t fall in line with Trump-like
tyrannies, cant and orthodoxy, and environmentally and
physiologically devastating behaviors (including our favorites:
driving cars, eating meat, burning electricity). This current
plague time might see a recharged commitment to a closer-to-
the-bone worldview that recognizes we have a short time on
earth, the Doomsday Clock is a minute from midnight, and living
peacefully and meaningfully together is going to take much
more than bed-making and canny investments. The Power of No
Habits.

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FILED UNDER: ECONOMY, THE BIG IDEA, THE F R I D AY COVER, CORONAVIRUS

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