Long-Term Economic Effects of the Coronavirus

The world will never be the same again.

Not only is the old world rapidly disappearing before our eyes, the new one is kicking down the front door with alarming speed.

In short: the future is happening fast, very fast.

To a large extent, long-term economic trends already in place have been given a turbocharger. Quite simply, you just take out the people. Human contact of any kind has been minimized.

I’ll tick off some of the more obvious changes.

To say that we are merely fatigued from a nearly three-year quarantine would be a vast understatement. Climbing the walls is more like it.

As I write this, US Covid-19 deaths have topped one million and cases have surpassed 95 million. China peaked at over 5,000 deaths with four times our population. The difference was leadership issue. China welded the doors shut of early Covid carriers.

Here, it said it was a big nothing and would “magically” go away.

The magic didn’t work, nor did bleach injections.

In the meantime, you better get used to your new life. You know that home office of yours you’ve been living in? It is now a permanent affair for many of you, as your employer figured out they can make more money and earn a high stock multiple with you at home.

Besides, they didn’t like you anyway.

Many employees are never coming back, preferring to avoid horrendous commutes, $5.40 a gallon gasoline, mass transit, lower costs, and yes, future pandemic viruses. GoToMeeting (LOGM) and Zoom (ZM) are now a permanent aspect of your life.

Commerce has changed beyond all recognition. Did you do a lot of shopping on Amazon (AMZN) like I do? Now, you’re really going to pour it on.

Amazon hired a staggering one million new distribution and delivery people in 2020 and 2021 to handle the surge in business, the most by any organization since WWII. I can’t believe the stock is only at $122. It is worth double that, especially if they break up the company.

The epidemic really hammered the mall, where a fatal disease is only a sneeze away. Mall REITs have since taken off like a rocket, once it was clear that the virus was coming under control.

And how are you going to pay for that transaction? Guess what one of the most efficient transmitters of disease is? That would be US dollar bills. Something like 50% of all US paper money already test positive for drugs, according to one Fed study. While in Scandinavia last summer, I learned that physical money has almost completely phased out.

Take paper money in change and you are not only getting contact from the sales clerk, but the last dozen people who handled the money. You are crazy now to take change and then not go swimming in Purell afterwards.

Personally, I leave it all as a tip.

Contactless payment deals with this nicely and is now here to stay. Next to come is simply scanning people when they walk in the store, as with some Whole Foods shops owned by Amazon.

Conferences?

They are now a luxury. All of my public speaking events around the world have been cancelled. Webinars now rule. They offer lower conversion rates but include vastly cheaper costs as well. I can reach more viewers for $1,100 a month on Zoom (ZM) than the Money Show could ever attract to the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay for $1 million.

At least I won’t have 18 hours of jet lag to deal with anymore on my Australia trips. I’m sure Qantas will miss those first-class ticket purchases and I’ll miss the free Champaign.

Entertainment is also morphing beyond all recognition. Streaming is now the order of the day. Disney+ (DIS) was probably the best-timed launch in business history, coming out just two months before the pandemic.

They earned enough to cancel out most of the losses from the closure of the theme parks. Again, this has been a long time coming and the other major movie producers will soon follow suit.

Movie theaters, which have been closed for years, may also never see their peak business again (CNK), (AMC), (IMAX). The theaters that survive will do so by only accumulating so much debt that they won’t be attractive investments for a decade.

The same is true for cruise lines (CCL), (RCL), (NCLH). But that won’t forestall dead cat bounces that are worth a double in the meantime, as they are coming off of such low levels. No vaccination, no cruise.

Exercise has changed overnight. All gyms and health clubs closed, and are only just now slowly reopening. Working out will become a solo exercise far away on a high mountain. I have already been doing this for 30 years, so piece of cake here.

Friends with yoga classes are now doing them in the living room, streaming their instructors online. The economics of online yoga classes are so compelling, with hundreds attending online classes at once. The old model may never come back.

If you are having trouble getting your kids to comply with social distancing requirements, have a family movie night and watch Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Winslet die horrible deaths in Contagion. It has been applauded by scientists as the most accurate presentation of the kind of out-of-control pandemic we have been dealt with.

It is bone-chilling.

I hope you learned from the last pandemic because the next one may be just around the corner, thanks to globalization. In 1918, it took three months for an enhanced mutated flu virus to get from Europe to the US. This time, it took a day to get from China.
 
Stay healthy.