Eventually, the coronavirus will be done and gone. We will be able to go outside, go to the store, and meet people face to face again, but that doesn’t mean the coronavirus will not leave behind paranoia and health concerns. With all these changes happening, we must expect that after COVID-19, society as we known it will not be the same again.

Since the coronavirus quarantine, major social spaces and gatherings have been forced to close down or limit the number of people. A major business affected by the outbreak is the airlines. We can see the similarities of this crisis with 9/11, where airplanes in and out of the US have required checks and scanning for any weapons or forms of suspicious activity before anyone can board or exit a plane. With the coronavirus impacting global panic, will this be the start for sanitary checks within transportation as well? It is possible that when the time comes for free travel again, airlines may require a new policy for passengers where they wash hands and sanitize seats before and after each flight to prevent another outbreak?

With our local stores being limited or even closed from this pandemic, digital stores are having their purchases increase if not skyrocket. In this age where we can purchase anything from a site and receive our items within the week if not the same day, it might be possible that this will become the official norm for our society. Many of our walk-in stores are facing economical problems in the quarantine, so when it comes time to return many of the stores that we had gone to in the past may either be falling short of purchases or not able to fully function as before. Making it easier to be replaced with their digital counterparts. 

The next major area of society that can be altered by the virus is the school system. Right now schools all over the US have transferred over to an online status where teachers and students are communicating, transferring work, and giving lectures through email or video classes. Many schools and classes already have been held online for years, so the transfer to an online school is nothing new. But when the virus is done we might just find that many of our classes can be online predominantly. We could also see it be required for in person interactions between students and faculty to washing hands before and after each meeting.

This is just a small sum of what we can expect from our future, where restaurants, parks, vacation locations, and even some doctors’ check -ups will be different for a while or permanently. But we shouldn’t expect that this virus will take away all of face-to-face interactions, in fact, we shouldn’t let it take it away. We must be willing to interact and mingle among other people. However, with this virus and the changes it is bringing, we should expect that society will be affected to be less socially packed, more health-conscious, and even more paranoid about our well-being.