Just a few random thoughts on long term effects.
I do think this thing will have some effect on the social and economic fabric of the world. Unfortunately a lot of the stimulus from central banks and government will be QE type stuff and trickle up hill. Like after the global financial crisis you'll be able to look at the proportion of the worlds wealth owned by the top 0.1-1% and it will have risen significantly.
More jobs will have WFH options and this will be encouraged to help with resilience for future disasters. Decentralisation (in terms of supply chains, workers etc) will increase generally and savvy businesses will lean into it. Maybe globalisation will drop in the physical sense but increase in a digital sense. The curve will be bent for global CO2 emissions and there will be calls to keep some consumption at reduced levels to help with that but there will obviously also be an urge to get the economy flying again.
Politically I'm not sure how things will go, will we all pull together or be pushed further apart? Will leaders like Trump be seen as strong or populist idiots? I guess most likely people will be pushed further to their partisan opinions.
I agree this does feel like one of those things that will alter the life we lead after the event, like post 9/11.
I certainly think we'll see more WFH as it's been shown to be feasible in certain sectors. However one thing that will take a lot of time to see the effect of is on mental health due to isolation and productivity.
I'd love it to be a move towards greater value of those lower down the pecking order but as I said above it's never really happened before. With things like the plague/WWi etc you got a bit of improvement in wages/rights etc but only small fry in relation to those in charge and this isn't the same as those affected the most are not a major part of the workforce and are predominantly retired.
One thing I'd also love to see, but won't expect to, is a change from the massive overweighting of economic growth as a measure of 'success' and instead move to a more balanced 'improvement' taking into account health (both physical and mental), education, environmental and societal factors like crime, homelessness and access to utilities/services as well as economic factors like growth and unemployment as well as far more emphasis put on economic disparities.
But that's why I'm Dreamer.
