What businesses will be ‘killed’ by the pandemic?

What industries or businesses will the Covid-19 pandemic kill? 

We’re seeing huge changes in people’s behaviors during the pandemic, so much so that some people are heralding the ‘death’ of lots more than people. Everything from offices to the NFL to the entire EU have been declared things of the past. 

Don’t get me wrong: predicting the future is a great pastime. It’s easy to do, it gets headlines, and hell, there’s no penalty if you’re wrong. I mean, who checks your record?

But the evidence says otherwise. 

There are two patterns we can confidently say will be repeated:

1. It’s rare for new tech or companies to entirely replace old ones. TV was supposed to kill radio, yet even terrestrial radio is still around. Movie theaters still haven’t gotten the memo that streaming will kill them. And Netflix was going to kill Red Box. Note: 40% of US homes still have DVD players — and use them. To quote Monty Python, “I’m not dead yet.” 

Instead of dying, old stuff usually shrinks, sometimes quite a bit, and finds a smaller and perhaps new role in people’s lives.

2. The lockdown and the behaviors it shifts will be temporary. Every time we’re hit by a flood or a hurricane or a disease outbreak (SARS, MERS, Ebola), we go into disaster-management mode until the disaster passes. Rebuilding often takes a lot of time. But then we’ll mostly go back to restaurants. We will open schools. And we will tailgate for our favorite team.

Yes, the details are still impossible to predict about precisely which company will or won’t make it through. But just like Mark Twain, the death of the NFL or the EU is greatly exaggerated.