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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBarry Diller Has No Time for Talk of a World Changed by Pandemic
LINK(Bloomberg) -- Forget working from home and Zoom meetings. Barry Diller is betting the future looks a lot like the past.
A billionaire who made his fortune first as a Hollywood mogul and more recently in online dating, Diller is predicting that life pretty much returns to normal once theres a coronavirus vaccine. Families will again take vacations and managers will send employees to conferences.
Hed better hope so, because one of his companies -- Expedia Group Inc., the online travel agency -- depends on it.
You cannot live in this moment where we project the future based on present circumstance, Diller said in a Bloomberg Front Row interview. I think relatively little changes.
Few chief executives share his view. Many are preparing for a world permanently altered by the pandemic, touting the virtues of video conferencing and discussing plans to downsize real estate.
While I think he's guilty of some very self-serving projection, at least he links a "return" to a vaccine. IMO anyone who does not get that is in for a very jarring awakening and a lot of frustration.
Full disclosure: I'm a big admirer of Barry Diller and his IAC team
soothsayer
(38,601 posts)Even the 1918 Spanish flu of 1917 wasnt forever.
Might be done sooner if our leaders would lead.
2naSalit
(86,048 posts)a minimum 5 year window with this virus unless it mutates itself to harmless before that.
SoonerPride
(12,286 posts)We have a 50/50 chance of either happening.
There is such an abundance of opportunity for multiple mutations that I'm thinking it's going to be absolutely devastating no matter which way it goes.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,746 posts)A lot of things will be very different once this is finally over, meaning if we get a good, effective, and long-lasting vaccine.
I like to make this analogy:
Say it's 1939, and we're planning a trip to Europe next spring. It's going to be great! We're planning to visit London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, maybe some other places.
Then September rolls around and WWII breaks out. Clearly we won't be going to Europe next spring, but maybe the war will end quickly and we can go in 1941.
But the war doesn't end quickly, as you all know. The soonest we might get to Europe will be 1946. If we ever do take our trip, it will be to a Europe that is vastly changed forever. It's going to be like that with this pandemic. Even if the countries that are doing such a good job of controlling this don't experience a second wave, even they are probably going to be profoundly transformed. But a lot of countries, not just the United States, are going to have a lot of deaths. Just give Brazil, India, lots of countries in Africa time. They'll be putting up numbers that will make us look like amateurs. Assuming they actually do valid reporting, which is somewhat iffy.
No, things will not return to "normal".
BannonsLiver
(16,161 posts)It may be unrealistic and he has a profit motive in it being that way but its okay to have a couple people out there who arent doomsayers or locked into Stockholm Syndrome with the virus, and who arent completely crazy either. As far as travel and a future return to whatever he thinks is normal, He may be right, he may be wrong. My moneys on somewhere in the middle. Either way, I didnt mind hearing what he had to say. He seems like a decent guy in many respects.