We are now midway through June.

What's going on with COVID-19?

With regards to Coronavirus stuff, I think that the numbers that really matter most are: are there shortages of hospital facilities?

This is an important, practical way to look at things because it is saying are we seeing worse effects (from the flu and other things) compared with other years? COVID-19 specifically is a mystery, but whether or not hospitals are totally overrun is something that is easier to see. Insofar as hospitals are not totally overrun, I think that we have room for optimism.

Counts of COVID-19 cases and stuff are not so informative because the way we've been getting these counts are far from uniform.

Society Stuff

Yet, we still see lots of people around doing stuff like writing "THE PANDEMIC ISN'T OVER" in chalk. In stores, perhaps most people are wearing some kind of mask thing of some sort.

As far as I can see, there hasn't been a mass return to physical office spaces though it looks like some people near me are starting to plan on this.

Some Predictions on the Post-COVID-19 World

What I see us drifting towards is a cyberpunk-ish (dystopia) like world. ¹ COVID-19 has revealed how fragile much of American society is—people living paycheck to paycheck. Many people have few people to turn to for emotional/financial/etc support; maybe physical workplaces provided some of this (e.g. through seeing co-workers, that was enough human interaction to keep going). It seems to me that most people in most places seem to have general dissatisfaction with what is going on.

Populism and democracy (in the sense of voting for stuff to affect policy; whether directly or through representatives) are two forces we can expect to see a lot more of. Urban people in particular can be expected to try to vote away problems. I do expect to see more chaos/civil unrest.

How might this be quelled? One avenue I can see this happening is that mega-corporations and government may be able to provide basic needs (e.g. food, basic hygiene, housing) in urban areas. Digital IDs (such as Google accounts) rather than permanent addresses may be how these things are tracked.

Overall, this lock down business has been very tough on small businesses. Many mega-corporations are doing quite well overall it seems, as reflected in measures like stock prices. In this way, we can expect to see large-scale problems continue to pop up that only very large businesses can deal with. Big companies can do the heavy lifting of logistics, and populist politics and democracy can force them to give basic needs to people. Insofar as people are dependent on these big companies (and government policies that make it so they must provide certain things), the elimination of the worse sort of poverty can be avoided and society can continue. These large companies—with government money injections—willl be able to provide many jobs to occupy people's time. Some examples include: stocking shelves, customer support, maintenance of facilities, and security services.

Urban areas will be places of mass consumption (through a handful of big companies), near-total surveillance (facillitated by smartphones), and constant nagging through ads.

Characters

There may be some "Buddha" types that live on the benefits of these systems, but really don't care about all the hype and stuff being generated to keep the populist machine going. This person may log in to their XYZ accounts as required at work, get a paycheck from a megacorporation, and then spend very little of it to get necessities and route the rest to some practical needs (e.g. investing for a home elsewhere). They patiently await breaking the cycle of suffering, and in the mean time cultivate mindsets that allow them to thrive.

There will be "community organizer"/"activist" types who take to this sort of environment like fish and water. The useful propaganda officers of the government and mega-corporation alliance, these people will provide the "grassroots" feelings to people on the ground, motivating normally non-political people to repeat the correct slogans and present the correct branding to signal their allegiance. Note that, gov'ts and megacorporations may make use of controlled opposition—similar to how when two sports teams play against each other, the NBA (or whatever-organization-oversees them) "wins" no matter which team wins the ball game.

There will always be politicians. The appeal of being a politician will increase with respect to how powerful/invasive the state is into people's lives.

There will be masses of normal people who just go along with the current times, trying to get by while enjoying some material comforts along the way. The people will be most of us, and they will be like water, flowing and adjusting with the times. Unlike the "Buddha" character, they will not think about transcending/breaking from this cycle at all. Rather, they will be medium by which various parties try to execute their agendas.