The Roaring Twenty-First-Century Twenties: A Selection from Nicholas A. Christakis’s Apollo’s Arrow (2020)

“After the intermediate pandemic period ends, in about 2024, there will still be normative, social, technological, and economic aftereffects of the virus and our responses to it. Some are hard to foresee, but other changes are easier to predict. If history is a guide, it seems likely that consumption will come back with a vengeance. Periods of plague-driven austerity have often been followed by periods of liberal spending. . . .

If the Roaring Twenties following the 1918 pandemic are a guide, the increased religiosity and reflection of the immediate and intermediate pandemic periods could give way to increased expressions of risk-taking, intemperance, or joie de vivre in the post-pandemic period. The great appeal of cities will be apparent once again. People will relentlessly seek opportunities for social mixing on a larger scale in sporting events, concerts, and political rallies. And after a serious epidemic, people often feel not only a renewed sense of purpose but a renewed sense of possibility. The 1920s brought the widespread use of the radio, jazz, the Harlem Renaissance, and women’s suffrage. Of course, the 1918 flu pandemic followed World War I and was itself more deadly. But we can expect to see similar technological, artistic, and even social innovations after the current pandemic—for instance, reflecting the ripple effects of larger numbers of people working from home.

The economic aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic will also likely be substantial. We have already considered the probable intermediate-term backlash against globalization, immigration, and urban living, but any such changes seem unlikely to persist past 2024, since the economic benefits of those long-term trends are so compelling. Other economic aftershocks of the pandemic may endure longer, however. A sustained recession could snowball into a true depression with effects of longer duration.”—Nicholas A. Christakis, Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of the Coronavirus on the Way We Live (2020)