Our crystal ball, a year later
A year ago, in December of 2020, I was putting the final details into the narratives of the three future scenarios that we prepared for our "Envisioning the post-COVID future of urban logistics" project, of the Urban Logistics Laboratory, which I led until recently.
Scenarios are not meant to be predictions about what will happen, only plausible and challenging projections to help you prepare. Having said that, it is interesting to look back at the 'visions of the future' conjured twelve months ago, to see if our crystal ball worked.
In terms of the pandemic, a key driving factor of our present reality, the scenario that more closely resembles our current state is Scenario A: Long-Haul Exodus. What follows are some excerpts from the narrative of that scenario (written in December 2020):
"...during the last few months of 2020 and the first half of 2021, while Europe and the United States were suffering one of their darkest winters, Australia had managed to bring COVID under control. Leveraging its geographical isolation, and through a series of new protocols and systems, Australia had become the envy of the West: many states recorded zero new community cases on most days, and any sporadic outbreaks were quickly identified and contained.
"However, it all changed in the second half of 2021. Some blame it on complacency on the part of the population, while others argue it was the result of opening our borders to international tourists and students more quickly than our quarantine system could support. Whatever the reason, COVID cases started to spread locally by mid-2021, with alarming speed. By the end of 2021, all of Australia’s largest cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth – were reporting an unexpectedly large number of new cases COVID cases every day, predominantly of the newer, more contagious strains.
[...] "Furthermore, new strains of the SARS CoV-2 virus kept emerging in countries with high levels of contagion and – through international visitors and faulty quarantine systems – making their way into Australia. Some of these strains were more contagious (and even deadlier) than the original, and were not fully neutralised by the existing vaccines. For several years, new strains kept appearing faster than we could develop and administer new vaccines to protect us against them. Because of this, while few vaccinated Australians developed the deadly form of COVID, many of them did acquire the new strains of the virus, which continued to spread among the population."
Not bad for having been written in December 2020, right? I have to thank all the scientists (epidemiologists, vaccinologists and immunologists) that I interviewed for sharing with me their insights.