Okay, just because it may be fun to look back at this in 2025, here’s what I believe will happen:
- Because Omicron has been somewhat less deadly and much more contagious, a most people will have contracted the virus within the coming weeks.
- Those who survive will be—like me—less afraid of dying from it and are really fed up with everything covid-related. They want to feel healthy and are no longer afraid of breathing in other people’s germs. This will lead to an accellerated loosening of restrictions, making the the virus spread even quicker.
- The summer on the northern hemisphere will be one cultural outdoor events. But rather than a roaring 20s kind of thing, people want smaller, more intimate settings because who knows how to socialize anymore.
- Some countries will normalize voluntary mask wearing in public spaces.
- Office work will remain a combination of WFH and on-site meetings. Some conservative organisations (those who still haven’t managed to digitalize their processes) will require staff to come in again. This will create an obvious divide between boring, old companies and modern, progressive companies. Because with trusting people to be productive at home comes a lot of company culture that will attract the type of inherently motivated people, whereas the other type of company will attract authoritative leaders who don’t trust their people.
- Similarly, there will be a lot of small things in which people will behave differently, like shaking hands. Ultimately these are connected to values like tradition and care for others. These behaviors will divide people into two factions that have already been politicized. This will get worse for a while, but then better again, because the careful people will become less scared and the traditionalists will experience more and more covid cases up close.
- Each fall there will be new variants. Most will be less deadly, but there will be some panic about a potentionally more deadly variant.