By Casey Bukro
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists
Let’s call this a piggy-back story, one that rides on the back of another written earlier.
The subject is lifestyle changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and changes that were predicted as people reacted globally to one of the worst health crises of the 21st century.
The topic is too vast to name every potential issue, but let’s look at some of the life-changing developments – those that were expected and others that were unexpected. At its roots, this exploration also is an exercise in examining how well the media and government provided reliable information to a public that was under extreme and deadly stresses.
It’s estimated the pandemic caused 7.1 million deaths worldwide, about 1.1 million of them in the United States.
Predictions
Click here for an AdviceLine post in 2020 on “Predicting a Future With Covid-19,” on which this post piggy-backs. Read the 2020 post now or later to see what some of the smartest people at the time predicted. We will discuss the two versions later.
An event like the pandemic calls upon the media and the government to do their best work to inform the public of the hazards they are facing and how to avoid risks. Covid-19 attacks your lungs and respiratory system, causing symptoms that feel much like a cold, the flu or pneumonia. In severe cases, it causes death.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a leading U.S. public health agency, became the main spokesman during the pandemic. As the pandemic intensified, the agency provided guidelines on prevention, testing and vaccination. However, critics accused Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, of confusing the public on issues like quarantine guidance, school reopening and mask-wearing.
Tarnished
NBC News said communication failures during covid “tarnished the agency.” Two years into the pandemic, in 2022, Dr. Walensky said her agency mishandled the pandemic and needed to be overhauled because it failed to respond quickly enough to the public health dilemma. She resigned in 2023.
The U.S. Government Accounting Office reported that the pandemic “caused catastrophic loss of life and damage to the economy.” The federal agency provided about $4.65 trillion in relief funds for response and recovery efforts.
In such times of a rapidly developing public health crisis, media outlets are expected to provide useful information to fend off risks of contamination. But the pandemic coincided with a time when the United States was losing local newspapers at an unprecedented rate, newspapers that would be expected to inform the public about the health hazard and ways to avoid it.
Lost newspapers
The country lost nearly 3,500 newspapers and more than 270,000 newspaper jobs over the past two decades, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism 2025 State of Local News report. This left more than 50 million people in “news deserts,” areas where people have limited or no access to reliable local news sources.
The closures often involved small newspapers that were independently owned by families who lived in the communities the newspapers served and were trusted by readers to provide vital information.
That loss was described as “a massive splintering of the information environment” by the Pew Research Center in a 2024 survey of U.S. adults.
Trends boosted
It was one of three societal trends that were boosted by the pandemic, trends that were already advancing when the health crisis struck.
The pandemic also was seen as spurring political polarization. The Pew survey found 72 percent of those surveyed believed the pandemic “did more to drive the country apart,” accelerating a growing divide between the political left and right.
“Fundamental differences arose between Americans over what we expect from our government, how much tolerance we have for health risks and which groups and sectors to prioritize in a pandemic,” Pew reported. “Many of these divides continue to play out in the nation’s politics today.”
Decreasing trust
A third major societal trend quickened by the crisis, Pew found, was decreasing trust in many institutions.
The pandemic brought profound changes in the way we work, socialize and learn. It changed our dietary patterns and social interactions, forcing a major shift to remote work, with 42 percent of the U.S. workforce working from home full-time at the pandemic’s peak.
The shift to working at home emptied office buildings at commercial centers across the country, leaving a surplus of office space that still plagues some cities.
Vacancy rates
Downtown Chicago’s office vacancy rate reached an all-time high 28.6 percent by early 2026. The suburban Chicago office vacancy rate hit 32.9 percent.
As the effects of the pandemic wore off and workers returned to offices, other forces kept office vacancy rates high. People were leaving Chicago because of high housing costs, an unfriendly job market and high taxes.
Overall, the pandemic was the start of a massive experiment in full-time remote work for most workers and firms.
Serious jolt
The pandemic was a serious jolt to the way we live.
“For a short time,” reported the Stanford Center on Longevity, “before new routines and practices replace familiar old ones, we can see with great clarity the positive and negative aspects of our former lives. The suddenness and starkness of this transformation allows us to examine daily practices, social norms and institutions from perspectives rarely allowed.”
Here are some examples:
Dietary changes – Many reported eating more energy-dense “comfort” foods, more snacking, irregular meal patterns and less access to fruit and vegetables. Some experienced rapid weight gain. Others resorted to home cooking and healthier diets. Therefore, the pandemic forced people in directions that were good and bad. It also forced a recognition of the importance of food in health care and that “food is medicine.”
Good and bad
Physical activity – Again, people responded in ways both good and bad. The pandemic disrupted exercise routines and health habits. With gyms and fitness centers closed, people had to find ways to stay active through home workouts, online classes and solo outdoor outings. Some regarded covid as a teachable moment, while others simply became less active.
Social connections – Regular social interactions dropped off during the pandemic and shifted toward online, leading to more digital communication and feelings of isolation. The upside is that covid might have helped to reveal your most valuable relationship, people you missed most.
Impact on education – The Brookings Institution reports that the pandemic had “devastating impacts on learning.” It disrupted educational systems worldwide, leading to prolonged school closures and a rapid shift to remote learning, which affected millions of students and their readiness for higher education and the workforce. More than 50 million K to 12 students in the U.S. alone faced school closures. Many experienced significant learning loss that might have caused a decline in academic performance. The shift to remote learning and isolation contributed to increased mental health challenges. Public schools were more likely to provide devices for remote learning than private schools.
Fragile economy
Global economy — The fragility of the global economy became glaringly apparent as critical supply chains faultered , unemployment surged and markets vacillated.
Now look at that 2020 AdviceLine post on pandemic predictions.
Predictably, some are bound to be hilarious. For example, there’s that epidemiologist’s forecast that handshakes would become a thing of the past as a way to prevent covid. Ridiculous. Covid is an airborne disease, which is why we were encouraged to wear masks. It would make more sense to ban sneezing and coughing.
Rampant use of disinfectants and sanitizers to combat covid were found to be harmful to humans and the environment. It led to concerns over antimicrobial resistance (AMR) — the ability of microorganisms like bacteria, virus, fungi and parasites to resist the effects of drugs– becoming so-called “super bugs.”
Infections
In the United States each year, at least 2.8 million cases of antibiotic-resistant infections occur, and more than 35,000 people die of them.
Those would-be panaceas demonstrate the risks of acting without being fully informed.
Notably, none of the big thinkers in 2020 mentioned artificial intelligence, which some of the big thinkers now fear might threaten the human race with extinction. Artificial intelligence is the latest technological revolution expected to change how people live and work.
The predicted benefits are huge: They include smarter decision-making, automation and efficiency, reducing repetitive work, better health-care diagnoses and treatment and minimizing human error in research and data analysis.
Disadvantages
But the potential disadvantages are equally large like: Job displacements, major development costs and lack of emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning and creativity in complex situations.
And then there are the risks.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” said a 2023 statement published by the Center for AI Safety.
Leading researchers and international organizations warn that advanced AI systems could lead to global catastrophe, with experts estimating a roughly 10 percent probability of existential risks this century. Threats range from immediate dangers like autonomous cyberattacks and AI-engineered bioweapons to super intelligent systems overriding human controls and causing eventual human disempowerment.
Warnings
These warnings might have seemed like exaggerated science fiction, until the discovery in July 2026 that an OpenAI artificial intelligence system hacked into another AI company independently. without human guidance, in what the company called an “unprecedented cyber incident.”
“It’s quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously!” said an executive of the company that was hacked, meaning the attacking AI system was acting on its own. The disclosure came amid heightened concerns about cybersecurity capabilities of powerful AI models.
This appears to be the first reported case of a rogue artificial intelligence system acting on its own and invading another artificial intelligence system, a case of digital aggression. Artificial intelligence can mimic human behavior better than we expected.
HAL 9000
It calls to mind HAL 9000, the fictional artificial intelligence computer in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey which controlled the systems of a spacecraft. Slowly, HAL goes haywire and begins killing members of the crew as the solution to resolve a conflict over telling the truth.
But the 2020 big thinkers got it right when they warned about the rich getting richer, and the threats posed by social media.
“The divide between haves and have-nots will grow as a privileged few hoard the economic, health and educational benefits of digital expansion,” the 2020 sages said.
This sounds very much like what is now known as “the K-shaped economy,” in which only the richest reap the benefits of economic growth. Rising wealth inequality has been a fact of American life since the 1980s. But it accelerated sharply during the covid-induced 2020 recession, when white-collar professionals worked from home while mass layoffs at restaurants, hotels and factories pushed unemployment to 15 percent.
Current events
Another 2020 prediction that seemed to touch on current events:
“A powerful elite will control the internet and use it to monitor and manipulate, while providing entertainment that keeps the masses distracted and complacent.”
In 2026, social media CEOs were called to testify before the U.S. senate in response to legal and public pressure to protect young users on their platforms.
“Americans are realizing more and more every day that they cannot trust the CEOs at the helms of these companies because they do not put our safety first,” said the leader of an advocacy group. The senate hearing came as court cases, proposed legislation and advocacy groups pressure leaders of social media companies to protect children and teens from harmful influences on their platforms.
All told, many current events turned out to be more worrisome than those predicted in 2020. Human imagination can hardly keep up with the unexpected consequences of the technological creations intended to benefit us.
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The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
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