Seems like it is over, but are we going to change?

Seems like the pandemic is over, in other ways, the financial implications of the pandemic cannot be tolerated across the continent and seems like all over the world anymore. The restrictions are easing in Europe, from 15th June 2020 most of the shops and malls can reopen again in the United Kingdom, the mighty Premier League will return on 17th June, pubs and restaurants rumoured to be back in business from July. As it stands from 30th May some of the bus routes in London will be back to normal schedules and also become payable again as they will start to reopen the front doors. From mid June Transport for London confirmed that all public transportation will be back to normal or increased service to serve the economy and of course they won’t be free anymore.

Stricter regulations will be in place, no changing rooms in shops, so far no news about gyms and public sport facilities or when they will be accessible for the public. Hand sanitisers and of course limited number of people will be allowed to stay in the shops like in the grocery stores, social distancing measures will remain the same with the 2m distance requirements.

The question that keep on bugging me is whether we remain the same after all this, will everything return to its old ways or the way we do business, the way we work, our consumer behaviour will change forever?

This global pandemic showed how vulnerable is our economy, how little value most businesses are providing and what effects the quantitative easing got on our economy. It was quite clear that the easy access to low interest bearing corporate loans were big mistakes cause it encouraged businesses to stretch further than their blanket lasts. Kept afloat badly managed companies, boosted useless corporate mergers and encouraged share buybacks.

I really do hope that most people learned few things from the past 3 months, simple things such the emotional purchases of the useless things are absolutely unnecessary, that the companies we are working for they really don’t care about us and we are just a fast depreciating human assets to them, also hope it shone light on the importance of emergency funds, will discourage the reckless spending, helped us to use things around us more efficiently and of course the need to help others around us.

I believe the world won’t be the same after this but we will remain the same, people will forget all the past mistakes as quick as they did after the financial meltdown of 2008 or the dot.com bubble in 2001 or the great depression much earlier. We never learn, but it does not mean everything will remain the same, companies potentially will support more the work from home culture, many jobs won’t be back cause in this pandemic corporations probably realised that they have a large number of employees whom eventually don’t create value for them. It will take time for corporations to recover their losses and even the return to business will be a slow ride due to the safety measures in place.

Kind of confident that human interactions, relationships are going to be valued more, I have hope that the minimalist lifestyle got into a trend and people became more mindful about their purchases. I am also sure that once the full reopening is taking place, the restaurants, bars, cinemas and gym will be full and we will return to our normal schedule, at least most of us, hopefully there will be people whom changed for the better forever. One step at a time in the good direction is a start of a journey, maybe towards simple living, less waste, minimum economical footprint.

I guess most of us have a take away from this and if one have to be highlighted for is the same as always, sometimes the less is more.

Your sincerely

To/Minimal