How Life Could Get Better (or Worse) After COVID Fifty-seven scientists make predictions about potential positive and negative consequences of the pandemic. By Igor Grossmann, Oliver Twardus | April 6, 2021 How do pandemics change our societies? It is tempting to believe that there will not be a single sector of society untouched by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a quick look at previous pandemics in the 20th century reveals that such negative forecasts may be vastly exaggerated. Prior pandemics have corresponded to changes in architecture and urban planning, and a greater awareness of public health. Yet the psychological and societal effects of the Spanish flu, the worst pandemic of the 20th century, were later perceived as less dramatic than anticipated, perhaps because it originated in the shadow of WWI. Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud described Spanish flu as a “Nebenschauplatz”—a sideshow in his life of that time, even though he eventually lost one of his daughters to the disease. Neither do we recall much more recent pandemics: the Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu from 1968.