In every crisis lies the blueprint of the future – what can we predict now? What will lie ahead: economy of sharing, less partisanship, less hate?

Even in these early stages, there is a real sense of demarcation between life "before" and life "after" the pandemic. In coming months and years, we will experience a vast array of aftereffects, both emotional (e.g., risk tolerance, life priorities) and more tangible (e.g., national stockpiles, workplace configurations).

Some 18 months ago, when I was making predictions for 2019, I mourned the loss of four big pillars of public discourse: civility, compromise, constraint, and conversation. The "End of C," I called it. Then, at the end of 2019, I introduced my next trends report with these words: "2020 will be all about ways to inject control, calm, and clarity into a world that can seem to be spinning out of control." Some five months into the year, I think we can agree that "control, calm, and clarity" would be phenomenal but wholly unexpected. It's amazing how quickly an...