You personally say some businesses and concepts are dead. Which ones? Spectator crowds at sports games? Community festivals? Parties and hugs?
I'm thinking that anything which had passed its' peak anyway, due to technology or simply being outdated / old, may well never resume whereas without the virus it would have declined far more gradually over however long.
Retail is an obvious area there. Now that even those who were previously reluctant, older people mostly, have given online ago it seems reasonable to expect that at least some will stick with it. Physical shop trading volumes won't go back to pre-pandemic levels.
The entertainment industry is another area where I think that may occur. For those bands and other performers who are passed their peak but were still touring, well I wonder how many will bother getting going again? And how many will decide that now that they've been forced to stop and have become accustomed to doing whatever they're doing instead, that's it they're done with standing on a stage, indeed they're done as such, and it's all over now?
There would likely be some in far more normal jobs who think similarly. They've been forced to stop doing whatever, they're near retirement anyway, so can they really be bothered getting going again? Or is that it, game over?
Cruising's another one where it's hard to see there not being at least some permanent damage. For those who just wanted a holiday and don't really care if it's a cruise or if it's some other sort of trip, well there's a lot of negative publicity for the entire concept out of all this.
The big one though, more significant than the rest, I wonder about is the concept of CBD head offices in big buildings? Historically that's been the goal of many, get promoted to head office, but I wonder if now the opposite is true? Will the best talent be seeking to avoid such places unless paid enough to persuade them? Is a CBD office now a liability rather than an asset?
As a case in point, well NAB have mothballed entire office towers and yet they're still functioning as a bank. That raises a lot of questions as to why, exactly, they'd go back to those buildings with all the costs involved and so on? Especially so if they find some other bank trying to poach their best staff with an offer of permanent work from home. Etc, same with any business. WFH is now more than proven for purely desk-based roles and any employee who wants to do it and is worth employing is going to be using it as a bargaining point.
Another one I wonder about is locations. Eg Melbourne and Sydney versus the smaller capitals or anywhere regional? The whole virus experience would seem to be a negative for the bigger cities especially and I'm thinking that at least some will want out. That then comes back to employers - if someone in Melbourne wants to keep their star employees then they might have to just accept that they now live in regional WA and will never be turning up to the office physically.
That then has implications for real estate and house prices if fewer people have an actual need to live anywhere specific and particularly in the big cities. No doubt there's quite a few Victorians who over the coming weeks will browse real estate websites looking at homes in regional areas or interstate.
And so on. I'm basically thinking that anything where there was an existing trend due to technology or age etc has just been given a huge push along.
I've no doubt that I'll be wrong to considerable extent, we're not going to abandon the entire CBD or anything like that and not every 50 year old singer is going to throw in the towel at this point, but I'm thinking that we'll see some changes with that sort of thing. If even 5% or 10% shift then that's a huge impact on things like office vacancies and so on.
In short, I'm thinking that some will adopt the forced changes permanently. They've been forced to see a different way, a way that doesn't involve them trawling through shops in search of something, working in a CBD office or standing on stage bashing out their hits from the 1980's or whatever and I'd be surprised if some don't stick with the change permanently.