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This may speed the rate at which we move toward distributed work. As companies are forced to implement remote work solutions, they may find that it works out well, and since they have already invested in facilitating work from home, they may retain that model once the crisis abates.
If that happened, it would have knockon effects. There would be less need for people to live in dense cities, so housing prices would fall. Less gridlock on roads due to less commuters. Less fuel consumption due to less commuters. Less time wasted commuting. The demand for office space would decline...
My big hope is that prestigious universities lose a bit of their value, exclusivity. If we're really serious about education, then offering extremely cheap online classrooms is the way to go. I've always dreamed of hiring the top educators in their respective fields, recording their lectures, and offering online courses based on those lectures. There's simply no reason why these top educators need to repeat the same lectures every semester to a new group of 400 people crammed into a lecture hall when you can do it once, and distribute to an infinite number of people. Not only that, but the lecture can be revisited as needed.
Why do banks close? It's the computers that do the important work, and they don't rest. I hope we demand that the banking system catch up to the 20th century, let along the 21st.
We probably should abandon the handshake as a greeting, as much as I like it. I've always liked the Japanese bow.
Then there's the unspoken societal benefits, such as providing some relief to our social security, medicare, and other tax draining systems. The disease tends to cull the least productive in the population. That isn't to say we should be happy that people are losing loved-ones for the greater good of society, but it is a benefit to society as a whole nonetheless.
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