> One change I am already seeing is an increase in single use plastics, for > health reasons. I suspect this will accelerate, reversing years of > attempted policy change.
I've also seen the opposite; in a country with limited PPE (UK?) there was some discussion (I don't know how serious) of whether they should go back to washable PPE, as some of the older medical staff had remembered. Anyway, I now currently suspect (with results in from the AT, DE, and IS random studies) that we are definitely going to have to make behavioural changes in order to resume normal economic activity: even after we get past this wave, the susceptible fraction of the population will still be huge. Social distancing (reducing the connectivity of the physical social graph) appears to have been remarkably effective, but I don't know of anything else short of widespread vaccination that would be as effective; I don't think hoping for a mutation to a more benign strain is a policy; and I doubt (but this may just be my US upbringing speaking?) many countries are prepared to put enough value on human life to continue their current drastic reductions through 2021 (which is when I understand a vaccine might be ready). Good luck, Silklisters everywhere... -Dave My wife received facebook news from an old classmate in ZA that (so far) Coronavirus has paradoxically been a net positive for their death rate: the number of viral deaths having been less than the plummeting murder rate since lockdown. At least a cursory double-check seems to agree: https://www.businessinsider.co.za/coronavirus-in-south-africa-everything-we-know-about-covid-19-in-sa-2020-3
