Juno News - Will we ever go back to the status quo？ Not likely.

00:00:00.000 I think some of the biggest changes to our lives and to our societies as a result of the pandemic

00:00:10.840 are yet to come. Now what do I mean by that? Because that may seem like a sort of counterintuitive

00:00:15.860 thing. Because we're now at a point where the economy is coming back online, things are returning

00:00:20.620 to normal, or at least some degree of new normal, and our lives right now in August seem to be

00:00:26.100 resembling more or less what they looked like a year ago as opposed to what they resembled in say

00:00:30.760 April when everything was shut down. So how can that make sense that the most, the most profound

00:00:36.660 changes are still yet to come? Well I think to some stories that I've been reading, a number of them

00:00:41.720 about how there is more of an exodus from the cities to the country. Particularly I read about

00:00:46.580 in Manhattan where units used to be priced you know 20 million dollars, they have a lot of expensive

00:00:51.160 real estate in Manhattan, and those 20 million dollar listings have been cut down massive amounts,

00:00:55.420 20 down to 15, 12, 10 million dollars, 50 percent off. Meanwhile in the outlying areas, New Jersey,

00:01:01.760 Connecticut, places where you can get to Manhattan in about an hour's train ride, they have been soaring

00:01:06.420 those prices unlike ever before really. Real estate agents say this is quite something. So what you have

00:01:12.280 there when people pick up and move their families, that is a major change. That is more or less a

00:01:17.960 permanent change. That is not just a temporary situation where okay we're going to try things a little

00:01:22.520 different for a few months like we've all been doing in March, April, May, and June and so forth

00:01:26.720 during the shutdowns. I think what's going on is this pandemic is making people stop and they are

00:01:33.100 asking a lot of very fundamental questions about their lives, about the nature of work, their

00:01:38.860 relationship to work and commuting and so forth, about their relationship to the parts of their

00:01:44.300 country that they live in, their relationship to health care, to travel. Starting to say,

00:01:48.920 do I really need to get on a plane and go around the world all the time as I've been doing?

00:01:53.100 Maybe I can enjoy places in my own province, in my own state more. A lot of rethinking and a lot of

00:01:58.180 this is not clear. Who knows how this is going to chalk out and there's going to be different degrees

00:02:02.260 of changes for different sectors. But I think that those are the changes that people have yet to really

00:02:08.640 factor in. And more interestingly, I think government, the politicians, media, a lot of these so-called

00:02:15.180 influencers, they have yet to factor in. I mean, you look at Canadian politics right now and people

00:02:20.180 are kind of acting and talking as if this is business as usual. I don't think so. I think the

00:02:24.340 very nature of government is going to change in the next few years. I think the nature of traditional

00:02:29.220 political parties is going to change, whether it's in how the Liberal Party and government has been

00:02:33.600 behaving or even during the Conservative leadership. I mean, a lot of people are kind of stuck on the same

00:02:38.400 ideas, the same old path as if life is normal. It is not. We're going to see some profound changes to

00:02:44.640 sort of the basic fundamentals of the way we live our lives in the years ahead. I don't know how those

00:02:51.240 all are going to be. It'll be interesting. I mean, tell me your thoughts on what you think is going to

00:02:55.520 change in a permanent sense and how it's going to change. But it's kind of funny to see that a lot

00:03:00.380 of people haven't clued into this yet, or they're maybe even resistant to it. They want to go back to the

00:03:05.440 status quo, but it's not going to happen.

Juno News - August 13, 2020