Coronavirus America 5 Weeks Later

Five weeks since the coronavirus shut down Los Angeles and wow things have changed.

There are lines to enter grocery stores.

U.S., Mexico, and Canada's borders are closed.

Most states have instituted stay-at-home orders and in many like California, you have to wear a mask to conduct business in public.

Millions are unemployed, the market is still way down with talks of a depression, and layoffs - or the word of the day "furloughs" - seem to be speeding up.

Nurses in Detroit are striking, people in Michigan are protesting against stay-at-home orders, and Amazon is firing workers who complain about worker safety.

And public schools are essentially closed.

Crazy times indeed.

Who could have envisioned an America like this two months ago?

Life in America will change forever going forward, even if the changes seem small.

For example, tens of millions of Americans are now working from home. It has to change the value of having to work in an office for many of those jobs. If a worker has worked from home effectively for two, three, or four months, and an employee asks his boss to work from home one day a week when we all go back, how can she say no.  As a result, office space needs will decrease. Commuting will decrease. People will have more free time. Childcare needs will lessen. Traffic will decrease. Less gas will be purchased. Gas prices will go down. Oil company stock prices will go down. There will be less drilling. Ok, maybe I am getting carried away here, but you can see the ramifications of how just this one change will create shockwaves for the economy and society.

Distance education, food delivery, remote hospital visits, all things that seemed like fringe activities in the past are part of everyone's reality now and will be so going forward.

Tuesday, my Toastmasters club held its first online meeting. Toastmasters at its core is an organization that improves a person's ability to create and deliver effective speeches. It was very interesting to see how different a person has to prepare to provide an effective speech during a Zoom session. Does the speaker stand or sit? If you sit, how do you engage audience members with hand gestures, body movement? You can't walk around the stage. I think it is even harder to keep an audience engaged because they are not in the same room with you. There are more distractions for them in their home. It is also harder to read your audience to see if you need to pick up the pace or are speaking too fast. How do you engage in eye contact when you are only staring straight into your camera. I look forward to the challenge when I give my speech in two weeks.

2020 a time of change.

Take care and be safe.

Posts Monday, Thursday, Saturday