This year has been heavily dominated by the coronavirus pandemic. Schools moving online, families forced to stay at their house, local businesses shutting down for the time being. All we have is speculation as to when this will be over. Who knows if we’ll still be online for the fall semester. There are over 800,000 cases with over 45,000 deaths related to COVID-19 (“Worldometer”) and while we are trying to flatten the curve, normal life as we know it will not come back for some time, even when restrictions and lockdowns are lifted. 

Gatherings or events that involve crowds will have to be monitored initially, even having a crowd cap (“NBCNews”). It will be a gradual move back towards the norm we once experienced. Traveling and hotels also fall under this trend as there are fears that asymptomatic carriers could come from a part of the country where the disease is not contained and start a new flare-up somewhere else. Looking towards the current situation in the U.S., healthcare will be affected throughout this pandemic as well. In general, people should continue to try and keep themselves as healthy as they can and keep washing their hands and keep their areas clean. We need to make strides as a society to try and clean up more so another event like this can be avoided or handled better.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has pushed for the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. The increase in demand for health services and the rising unemployment rate will drive the growth of government programs. In 2019, over 61mm people were enrolled in some kind of Medicare plan, representing a modest growth rate of ~2.3% (“KKF”). The CMS projects that 72mm people will be enrolled in Medicare by 2025 and I think this year a lot of people will apply for this as a result of a high unemployment rate. People will lose the benefits they once had and will have to go into government programs.

Finally, the overall concerns for a recession have really started to set in. Bloomberg Economics created a model last year to determine America’s recession odds. The chance of a recession now stands at 100%, confirming an end to the nation’s longest-running expansion (“Bloomberg”). Now looking forward, this is good for students because then we’d be out of the recession most likely by the time we graduate so the economy would boom and it’d be a little bit easier to get jobs compared to looking for jobs during a recession. It isn’t good for families and people working though, as they could be laid off and leave their families in terrible financial situations. So basically this virus is just fucking everything up.

(My picture shows one of the most important commodities out there right now, and should continually be used so this doesn’t happen again, or if it does just not as bad.)

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