2020: The Year That Changed The World: 01

by Sachin V Gopalan

Futurist Thinker & Social Impact Champion

Part 1 of a Series

We are now in the year 2025.

Five years ago, the world faced one of the biggest pandemics in modern times. A new strain of Corona Virus managed to escape from Wuhan in China, and after creating undisclosed local devastation, spread across the globe riding on unsuspecting human hosts via airplanes and ships. 

In that normal world, the very essence of an increasingly globalized world had made way for inexpensive travel by humans from all walks of life, not just for work, holiday and study but also for no real reason at all. It was cheap, it was fast and it was a compelling part of the image of a modern lifestyle. These travel corridors soon became the choice of travel for the contagion .

Yet, mankind survived, as the odds of dying were in favor of the healthy, the young and the optimistic. Many countries managed to avert disaster by early actions that were spurred on by seeing the results of those countries that had acted late. In the age of social media, within a matter of minutes or hours everyone knew what happened when, where and how, and this level of information flow helped most people understand why and how to act in a timely and coordinated matter.

Due to creative mutations of the virus adapting to local conditions, the virus eradication effort went on for over three years. Those who were infected and recovered felt they had crossed over to the other side of immunity, but were then confronted by new mutations and this cycle is still ongoing today, five years hence. All we have today is better knowledge, health procedures and a dramatic change in treatment. Scientists over time, trial and error, found several effective treatments that vastly brought down the mortality rate and kept the infections under control. Prevention was a more difficult endeavor. 

People in initial euphoria of being early vaccinators did not realize that they would have to take a progressive series of vaccines that kept them immunized, and not very effectively at that. Being one-step ahead was all we could do.

So what changed? A lot, actually. The way we live, work, play and learn was redefined forever. Some say all of this was coming in 10 years, but we saw it all accelerated to happen in 2 years. Empowered and backed by powerful thinkers, innovators and technologists, many new startup companies emerged all across the globe, responding independently to solving their respective new local problems. They collaborated, they shared information and they used AI based research to arrive at a new way of living that we are now familiar with in the year 2025.

Lets take a closer look at what’s changed in some of the sectors that were the first to transform.

Travel

More than half the airlines have since been forced to close down or merge operations and fleets with surviving airlines due to the decreased demand for travel. What was once a frequent flyer alliance now became a real-life commercial alliance. Flights and sectors had to be reopened in a staged manner, in order to match with the human desire to fly. Re-opening the skies virtually had to start from zero. 

It was almost as though the entire aviation industry unfolded all over again, in front of our eyes. Airports had to make many changes in flight procedures. It was no longer feasible to take medical certificates or vaccination records from hospitals; not only because of high incidence of fraudulently obtained documents, but also that a passenger could easily be infected after getting a genuine certificate, maybe from the hospital that they got tested or even enroute to the airport. It became critical to ensure that passengers were clear of infection as they entered the airport or boarded a plane. 

This is why nowadays we first go through a health screening area before checking in our bags and get our boarding passes, following which we go to immigration, security and boarding area. At the Health Screening Zone, we now have instant test kits that give a result in few seconds, and it’s not just for Covid-19 but also other infectious diseases that have emerged in the last 4 years. Doesn't it feel strange that just 5 years ago there used to be Online Check-in from the comfort of your home/hotel room? 

Flight seating had to change, the economy section no longer worked. All seating had to be converted to seat passengers 2 meters away from each other with a divider much like in first class, and this made flight costs extremely expensive. Wearing a mask became mandatory, and many new devices were invented that covered both eyes and mouth and allowed one to breathe normally. Yes it is almost like we live in space and it now feels normal to walk around like this.

For land transportation, trains and buses imitated the high health security protocols of airlines. All in all, ticket prices jumped astronomically for the first 3 years as companies had to survive financially, and it has only recently started to come down as the industry found new ways of cost efficiency.

Cars were and continue to be the only easy and affordable modes of transportation as the new models were hermetically sealed with air filters and pumps, a new fitment much like air-conditioners were in the 70’s. One could now go from end to end with safety and convenience and this has now became the preferred mode of travel as people lost the desire to go to distant places that were far from the safety of their homes. A car has become an essential safety device for a family and the demand for purchasing of personal cars came back, dealing a huge blow to the ride hailing industry that had become dominated by new unicorns.

Personal transportation solutions like bicycles and e-scooters have become huge industries as people reduced their circle of travel to within their own neighborhoods. Work From Anywhere practices made it practical for a reasonably large part of the population to not have to commute to a main office but instead go to the nearest work hub and work from there. Yes you guessed right, Work From Home did not work out as expected as people realized they became burdened with house work and could not draw the line as to what productivity was needed to justify earning a full salary.  Besides, everybody needed a break from being around their family members all the time and looked for ways to get out safely in order to protect their sanity.

Humankind, thanks to video and communications technology, has finally realized that the world could still remain a big place by sitting at home and not having to venture far from their safety zone.

This is Part 1 of a series in Future Fiction. In subsequent posts, I will be covering what happened in other sectors such as Education, Property, Offices & Homes, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Hospitality, Food & Dining, Holidays & Vacations, Healthcare, Banking, Insurance, Jobs and more.