By David Ignatius @ WashingtonPost.com, Oct. 8

[....] Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of Uber, was the latest business leader to describe this post-pandemic reality. In a conversation streamed Monday on Washington Post Live, he predicted that his company’s Uber Eats courier service, which exploded in popularity after the lockdown, will be about equal in size to its traditional ride-share business going forward, after the pandemic is over.

Data from polling organizations, consultants and research analysts all make similar points. Some aspects of life will return to the way they were before, but many won’t. A September study of 13,200 Americans by the Pew Research Center reported that 51 percent believed their lives would remain changed in major ways.

[....] A report this month by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found that companies had shifted to remote work more than 40 times faster than they expected possible. Interactions with customers for North American companies are now 65 percent digital, compared to 41 percent pre-crisis. Changes made to cope with the pandemic — like moving to cloud computing or online purchasing — are “likely to stick in the long term.” [....]