An increasing number of Covid-19 vaccines are making their way into arms. That’s led to a growing sense that the end of one of the world’s worst pandemics may be within sight. But when it finally does end, what will that mean? Could things return to the way they were before anyone ever heard of the coronavirus? Experts are beginning to examine what life post-Covid might look like. Many of them are pointing to changes in the U.S. economy that may far outlive the crisis we’re in right now.
Some of the changes could be painful. Others might benefit us in the long run.
“We can be pretty confident that the post-Covid economy will be different from the pre-Covid economy,” says David Wessel, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “But it may surprise us.”