It took a global pandemic and stay-at-home orders for 1.5 billion people worldwide, but something is finally occurring to us: The future we thought we expected may not be the one we get.
We know that things will change; how they’ll change is a mystery. To envision a future altered by coronavirus, Quartz asked dozens of experts for their best predictions on how the world will be different in five years.
Below is an answer from Bill Nye, a science communicator, star of such shows as Bill Nye Saves the World, and author of the New York Times bestseller Everything All at Once.
Five years from now, it will be commonplace for city dwellers to wear face masks in public. Like other articles of clothing, these masks will be washable and reusable, but still effective. With the development of a vaccine in the next five years, enough people will be immune to the Covid-19 virus that people will largely have put this pandemic behind them, just as they did after the Spanish Flu of 1918 had killed 50 million or more worldwide. However, everyone in the US will either have known, or known of, someone who got very sick, as half a million of us will have died from the virus. I’d very much like this prediction to not come true.
To read more New Normal answers, click here.