How long can we expect to be locked-down and physical distancing? What will be some of the lasting impacts of the coronavirus on society? In thinking about what the future holds for Nature Canada, our Executive Director, Graham Saul, has compiled a list of recent articles that provide a big picture perspective COVID-19 and what we can expect in the coming months and years. 

1. Tomas Pueyo, “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance: What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time“, Medium, March 19, 2020. This is a long-read (30 minutes), but it’s worth it for the deep-dive into the various scenarios and implications before us. It’s the best overview that I’ve seen on what future scenarios entail. 
2. Brian Resnick, “Scientists warn we may need to live with social distancing for a year or more,” Vox, March 17, 2020. A good summary of some of the latest predictions without getting stuck on the situation in any one country.  
3. Ivan Semeniuk, “When does social distancing end? These graphs show where we are headed and why,” The Globe and Mail, March 20, 2020. A quick read outlining the most likely scenarios for how long we’ll be on lockdown or involved in physical distancing.
4. Kate Allen, “Months of school closures, social distancing needed to fight pandemic: U of T research,” Toronto Star, March 18, 2020. A quick read that lays out the findings of a recent paper from the University of Toronto about how long we can expect to be involved in various kinds of physical distancing. 
5. Nicholas Kristof, “The Best-Case Outcome for the Coronavirus, and the Worst,” New York Times, March 20, 2020. There’s a little bit of hope in this US-focused article, which is a nice thing in these dark times. (But, if you’d prefer not to read the worst case scenario, quit reading halfway through—as the author suggests.) 
6. Tom Frieden, CNN, “Former CDC director: There’s a long war ahead and our Covid-19 response must adapt,” March 21, 2020. A great combination of big picture thinking for the long haul and specific things that need to be taken into consideration today (including the critical importance of exercise and getting outdoors).
7. John Daley, “The case for Endgame C: stop almost everything, restart when coronavirus is gone,” The Conversation, March 20, 2020. A structured and quick overview of the options at our disposal with a little bit of an Australian perspective mixed in. 
8. Brayn Walsh, “Life after COVID 19 – how the pandemic could shape the future,” RNZ, March 14, 2020. This article is a little bit more theoretical than others but, in the process, it casts a wider net in thinking through how the virus could reshape human society as we know it. 
9. “Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How“, Politico, March 19, 2020. Thirty-four big thinkers’ predictions for what’s to come. This is a long read, and it is very focused on US institutions and society, but it’s the one I’m most likely to re-read in the coming weeks. 
10. Gideon Lichfield, “We’re not going back to normal“, MIT Technology Review, March 17, 2020. A good overview of the argument about why we are in some form of rotating lockdown for the next 18 months and the implications for technology that facilitates citizen surveillance.
11. Yuval Noah Harari, “Yuval Noah Harari: The world after coronavirus“, The Financial Times, March 19, 2020. The author that brought us the book Sapiens argues that we now face two important choices: 1) between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment and; 2) between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.

Editor’s note: This blog post was updated on Monday, March 30 to reflect the shift in language from “social distancing” to “physical distancing.”