How different things are after Covid

I often refer to the writings of Thomas Frey, one of the world’s leading futurists and in one of his latest blogs, he once again hits the nail on the head with respect to identifying some pretty relevant things that have changed in our world post Covid.

Some of them are pretty obvious and you have no doubt heard or read about them already. However, here is a short list of some of the more interesting ones:

1. Our kids as well as our student body has been stunted. In the long run, we’ll see the impacts of stunted emotional development and interpersonal skills with this generation of children and students. For two years or more, they haven’t been able to have carefree interactions with their peers or benefitted from the institutional discipline of a controlled, in-person learning environment. I suspect we will only see the effects of this in years to come.
2. Birth rates over the 2 years didn’t rise – despite all of us being locked up at home. The disruptive nature of the pandemic amplified the already hectic lifestyle most families have balancing career and family demands. Anxiety, loss of income, “home-alone” fatigue, poor exercise regimes and a worse than normal diet were some of the negative factors contributing to falling birth rates.
3. An extra one third of new businesses that statistically should have failed, failed. In other words for every 3 businesses that would normally have failed without Covid present, another 1 business failed, bringing the total to 4 business failures. Multiplied by thousands.

In total there are nine factors. You can read the rest here.. https://futuristspeaker.com/future-trends/nine-unintended-consequences-from-our-approach-to-covid/

On the positive side, we have seen a real uptick in online activity. Learning platforms, new online business opportunities, online retail sales, notably food and Amazon or Takealot, virtual meetings, virtual gaming and the Metaverse and streaming media like Netflix, Prime and AppleTV are some of the beneficiaries.

I guess with most things, there is hardly ever an “all good” or an “all bad” situation, and often when we see the problem, it doesn’t take much to shift the problem into a challenge and then an opportunity.

And so in the end, if there’s one thing we’ve learned here – The Covid years certainly gave us a shake up to the point of realising that in the end we’re all just human, vulnerable as were are, finite in our existence, sitting on a planet, hurtling through space, all trying to be.