What will happen after corona ends?

 Okay we all wear masks when we go shopping, on buses and trains. And we keep our distance from other people until the corona crisis is over at some point. And then? Will everything then be the same as before? No, nothing will be the same as before, say experts. But what will our world look like then? We look at a few future scenarios.  

The bans on contact do not lead to loneliness, but to more closeness in society. In isolation, we learned to appreciate real conversation again, thanks to long phone calls and video chats, which had to replace our meetings for a while. 

Values ​​such as courtesy and reliability that many believed to be forgotten are experiencing a renaissance. The focus is on people again and the technology hype could come to an end, writes Horx. On the one hand, we now appreciate the advantages of digitization even more, because in the home office or study we have experienced that it is also good to work from home. At the same time, we realize that it was not digitization or artificial intelligence that helped us through this crisis, but rather “human-social intelligence”. And that also turns the world economy upside down.

For the time after the Corona crisis, the researchers predict two optimistic and two pessimistic scenarios. In the pessimistic scenario “Total isolation” people are dominated by fear: fear of the stranger, fear of germs, fear of being too close. The states cut themselves off from one another, the individual isolates himself. The people flee the crowded cities to the countryside and learn to support themselves. For fear of infection, communication is almost completely relocated to virtual space. Our health and our whole life are constantly monitored and travel is only possible under great other.

Family life will also change. People talk to each other more and more time is spent together. Digitization contributes a lot to this, says Opaschowski. The gaps in the German infrastructure are clearly visible, but the Internet has proven itself in the crisis. Home office, 3D printers and artificial intelligence are becoming more important in the economy. In private, it will be completely normal in the future for grandparents to talk to their grandchildren via video telephony and chat when they cannot visit each other

It's amazing how a small virus turns our whole world upside down and reprograms our future. If we stay optimistic, then we will stay healthy! Researchers have found that optimism has a positive impact on our well-being. And if we have already internalized one thing, it is that health is the most important thing.