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Comment by jameskilton | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully I'm wrong but I don't believe that they will. The lockdown isn't going to just disappear, it's going to be a drawn-out process figuring out how we're supposed to live with this virus. More places may be open but the demand will still be much lower than it has been. And that will have knock-on effects through everything else. I fear we are going to see a lot more people filing for unemployment for months to come.

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I agree, demand will remain low. I have been lucky enough to keep my job to date and I have discovered the joy of saving. The amount of money I have been able to keep once I stopped going out to eat and buying useless things is amazing. I can't think that I am alone in this. Compound this with the uncertainty in the job market and I think many people are going to be focused on saving for quite a while.

All of which is true, but it's too early to distinguish permanent damage from temporary inconvenience. There will be elements of both, and at the moment it's impossible to tell them apart.

We won't know the true picture until six months after the last significant outbreak. If we're lucky and there's no recurrence we'll have a clearer picture heading into winter.

If we're not and there is, there will be more damage and we won't be able to see the final picture until late next year.

I feel like commerce will figure out a way to adapt. Restaurants will build social distancing into the experience.

I work with NCR, the largest POS platform provider in the country. They didn't lay off a single person. Commerce isn't going away.

Some retailers were already struggling, I heard as many as 50% of mall retailers could close by 2021, which could cause the malls themselves to close and kick out the remaining tenants if they go bankrupt. Sure there's tons of other retailers, I'm from Dayton, where NCR used to be, so am familiar w/ the company, just because they haven't laid off yet, doesn't mean a year from now things will be as rosy.

I know for a fact in 2008 they laid off a lot, and iirc that's when they closed down the NCR/dayton facility. Didn't all happen at once, but it eventually did.

The crisis then was markets and just normal business. This is a full shut down of society followed by a period of consumer confidence issues (assuming consumers even have cash to consume with), it's not just going to bounce back.

This virus is only two months old. Companies with cash reserves don’t have to lay-off immediately... they can wait a few months and figure out how many they need to lay-off.

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