Health crisis speeding up developments

We are experiencing what experts agree is the biggest pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It's an almost impossible combination, especially if you've just emerged from the biggest recession since World War II. Confinement intensifies the experience, even though its scenes play out only on the screens that connect us to the outside world. Days seem to drag along, yet we count the time in weeks.

The coronavirus crisis has become the ultimate accelerator. Procedures that once inched along have suddenly adapted to the aggressive pace of the virus' spread. In just a few short weeks, our once ill-reputed state is being equipped with effective crisis management mechanisms and the country with digital systems and functions that would have otherwise taken years to implement.

Our habits are adapting with equal rapidity....