Coronavirus means we are getting five years’ worth of structural change in about five months

Some changes, like the plight of the high street, can be anticipated, while others will be surprising, writes Hamish McRae

To travel in one’s own quiet, clean electric car without worrying about other people’s bugs may have even more attractions in the future (Getty)

The US travel ban could last until 2021 – that was the warning from Steven Mnuchin. It was, the US Treasury secretary said, “a great time for people to explore America”.

The possibility that it may be a year before some activities get back to what we thought of as normal is gradually seeping into our consciousness. If Americans cannot travel abroad for a year, maybe Europeans won’t either. And when we do, maybe we will do so differently. Perhaps we will drive in our own cars to wherever we are going rather than flying and renting one. We all know about the problems of the airlines, but the turmoil is spreading. Hertz, the giant car rental company, is struggling to survive.

We are still in the first wave of a gigantic sorting out of the commercial world. There are obvious losers, such as any business in the travel, tourism or hospitality industries, the oil companies and the motor manufacturers – the UK has just had its lowest monthly car sales since 1946. There is a rather shorter list of winners, including the online delivery operations, the telecoms and pharmaceuticals. All this you might expect. But what about the longer-term effects? Economies are just beginning to open up – interesting to see how Texas, which is in the vanguard, manages vis-à-vis California, which is keeping the brakes on.

But the new normal will be different from the old normal. What can we say about this second wave of changes?

There is not much of a roadmap. It would be helpful if we could look at countries that are further along the line, but seeing what has happened in Wuhan doesn’t give us any real guide. Socially and economically the landscape is too different. There is a general principle that shocks speed up structural changes that are already happening, and that we can see in abundance: the shift to online delivery, the plight of the high street, and so on. We are getting five years’ worth of structural change in about five months.

But when a shock runs counter to structural changes, what then? Received wisdom is that things bounce back fast, and they may. But there are some signs that even in growth areas there was some sort of tipping point looming, so the bounce may be more muted.

A good example is urban public transport. Subway usage was already falling in New York before the catastrophe. The same for the Washington Metro and indeed for many other US cities. The London Underground was seeing a decline in numbers too. The Paris Metro seems to have been holding up, but it appears to have been an exception. It is at least plausible that urban transport usage will never recover to previous levels, even in booming cities.

Or take business travel. If companies shorten their supply chains, sourcing locally rather than buying the stuff from the other side of the globe, their people won’t have to travel so much. If business travel has hit a high point, even a recovery in leisure travel would not bring air transport back to its previous highs. It would not be a question of it being two or three years before air travel gets back to 2019 levels. It might never get back.

Peak air travel? Peak oil demand? Peak car use? That is all possible too. Certainly, it is a possibility that the world has seen peak oil demand, though I think the lure of the private car will last for another generation at least. Indeed to travel in one’s own quiet, clean electric car without worrying about other people’s bugs may have even more attractions in the future.

But the biggest question of all, from an economic perspective, will be when large gatherings can begin again: sports matches, theatres, clubs, restaurants, pubs, and so on. Here it is, I think, possible to be more positive, for a very simple reason. We love getting together. We have for thousands of years and will surely go on doing so. Look at the Colosseum in Rome. It held upwards of 50,000 people – no social distancing there. Or read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a group of people going on a pilgrimage and swapping stories every night in the pub they were staying at. The prize for the best story was a free meal at the Tabard Inn after they got back. Chaucer was writing after the Black Death, so a far worse pestilence than the one that has struck us did not kill the group tour.

Maybe the message is this. When all this settles down there will almost certainly be huge changes both in the way we earn our living and the ways we shop. But the true fun bits of life, Hilaire Belloc’s “laughter and the love of friends”, won’t change one dot.