A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and other institutions have released an early version of an app that they claim can determine whether you might have COVID-19, just by analyzing your voice.

Ive seen a lot of competition for the cheapest, fastest diagnosis you can have, said Benjamin Striner, a Carnegie Mellon graduate student who worked on the project, in an interview with Futurism. And there are some pretty good ones that are actually really cheap and pretty accurate, but nothings ever going to be as cheap and as easy as speaking into a phone.

Thats a provocative claim in the face of the global coronavirus outbreak, and particularly the widespread shortages of testing kits. But Striner believes that the teams algorithm, even though its still highly experimental, could be a valuable tool in tracking the spread of the virus, especially as the team continues to refine its accuracy by collecting more data.

You can use the COVID Voice Detector now to analyze your own voice for signs of infection, though it comes with a hefty disclaimer that its not a diagnostic system, not approved by the FDA or CDC, and shouldnt be used as a substitute for a medical test or examination.

The researchers behind the project emphasize that the app is a work in progress.

What we are attempting to do is to develop a voice-based solution, which, based on preliminary experiments and prior expertise, we believe is possible. The apps results are preliminary and untested, said Bhiksha Raj, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who also worked on the project. The score the app currently shows is an indicator of how much the signatures in your voice match those of other COVID patients whose voices we have tested. This is not medical advice. The primary objective of our effort/website at this point of time is to collect large numbers of voice recordings that we could use to refine the algorithm into something we and the medical community are confident about.

If the app is to be put out as a public service, it, and our results, will have to be verified by medical professionals, and attested by an agency such as the CDC, Raj added. Until that happens, its still very much an experimental and untrustworthy system. I urge people not to make healthcare decisions based on the scores we give you. You could be endangering yourself and those around you.

And at the end of the day, its unlikely the app will ever be as accurate as a laboratory test.

In terms of diagnostics, of course, its never going to be as as accurate as taking a swab and putting it on some agar and waiting for it to grow, said Striner, who has been working around the clock to prepare the app for release. But in terms of very easily monitoring a ton of people daily, weekly, whatever, monitoring on a very large scale, it gives you a way to handle and track health outbreaks.

If you have a smartphone or a computer with a microphone, using the app is simple. Users are prompted to cough several times and record a number of vowel sounds, as well as reciting the alphabet. Then it provides a score, expressed as a download-style progress bar, representing how likely the algorithm believes it is that the user has COVID-19.

Also working on the project is Rita Singh, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon who for years has been creating algorithms that identify micro-signatures in the human voice that she believes reveal psychological, physiological, and even medical data about an individual subject.

The cough of a COVID patient is very distinctive, Singh said. It affects the lungs so badly that breathing patterns and several other vital parameters are affected, and those are likely to have very strong signatures in voice.

A challenge for Singh and Striners team of ten Carnegie Mellon researchers who have all been working on the app from home, the campus is shut down due to the pandemic has been gathering enough audio from confirmed COVID-19 patients, in order to train the algorithm.

To gather that data, the team reached out to colleagues around the world. Those colleagues didnt just help them gather audio from COVID-19 patients, but also patients with other viruses, so that they could teach the algorithm to spot the differences. They even pored over news videos to find interviews with patients, and add those to the dataset as well.

You have samples of people that are healthy, you have samples of people that might just have the flu, Striner said. And you have all those different recordings of all the different types of coughs, like what are all the coughs that are out there? And then that allows you to kind of spot the differences.

Its difficult to quantify the current version of the apps accuracy, and both Striner and Singh reiterated that its output shouldnt be treated as medical advice.

Its accuracy cannot be tested currently because we dont have the verified test instances we need, Singh said, adding that the more people who use the app healthy or otherwise the more data they will have to better train the algorithm. If it comes from a healthy person, we then have examples of what healthy sounds like. If it comes from a person who has some known respiratory condition, we then know what that condition sounds like. The system will use all that data as counterexamples, and for disambiguating COVID signatures from those of other confusing conditions.

Ashwin Vasan, a professor at Columbia University Medical Center who was not involved in the Carnegie Mellon research, expressed reservations about releasing the app during a moment of global health crisis.

Despite what could be a well-intentioned attempt by a bunch of engineers to help during this crisis, this is not exactly the messaging we want to be out there, he cautioned. That somehow there is a nifty new tool we can use to diagnose coronavirus, in absence of the things we really need much more of, actual test kits, serologic testing, PPE for frontline healthcare workers, and ventilators for critically ill patients.

Lets keep the focus on that, especially when our leaders in Washington seem unable to meet those most basic needs, he added. Anything else is just a distraction.

For their part, the Carnegie Mellon team says theyre grappling with the public health implications of the app. Striner said that theyve consulted with colleagues in the medical research community, and that they carefully considered how to fine-tune the apps sensitivity.

We would probably side more towards having some false positives then false negatives, if that make sense, Striner said. If you give someone a false negative on COVID, then they walk around and get a bunch of people sick, versus a couple extra false positives, maybe some people get tests they dont need.

Editors note March 31: This story has been updated with additional remarks from Dr. Bhiksha Raj.

Read more from the original source:

New App Attempts to Detect Signs of COVID-19 Using Voice Analysis - Futurism

Big Kaboom

Stars with a certain deadly elemental cocktail in their cores could be doomed to suffer an early demise.

If a star forms enough neon, a rare and poorly-understood chemical reaction can trigger a star-killing thermonuclear blast, Gizmodo reports. The unusual phenomenon can explain why some stars detonate and collapse into white dwarves instead of continuing to live.

If a star has a core rich with neon, magnesium, and oxygen, the neon atoms can sometimes gobble up extra elections, according to research published in the journal Physical Review Letters. This triggers a nuclear reaction that detonates all of the cores oxygen, turning the entire star into a gigantic nuclear bomb.

Whats remarkable is that its a singular nuclear transition, and a very rare transition that you normally neglect, lead researcher, Oliver Kirsebom of Dalhousie University, told Gizmodo. Under the specific conditions in these stars, it could have a profound effect on the evolution.

What Kirsebom means by that is that these explosions can happen before a star grows and develops the intense, crushing density normally associated with the end of its stellar life cycle.

That may explain why younger, smaller stars sometimes detonate and turn into white dwarves before their time and instead of becoming the neutron stars that usually originate from a supernova.

READ MORE: How Neon Can Make a Star Destroy Itself [Gizmodo]

More on stars: Scientists Just Found a Dead Star Lodged Inside Another Star

See the article here:

Poison in the Hearts of Stars Can Make Them Explode - Futurism

Sharp Shooter

A sharpshooter on Reddit posted a pretty incredible snapshot to the Space subreddit over the weekend: The International Space Station, as seen from his backyard on Saturday night.

The user, who goes by 120decibel, explained that he nabbed the shot using what sounds like a relatively expensive telescoping rig (upwards of $7,000, according to another users estimate), and manually tracked the ISS in the night sky with a viewfinder (as it moves a a pretty fast clip at about 17,500 MPH).

You might not have a $7,000 telescoping rig and enough experience to nail thing thing in a viewfinder tonight, but according to another user on the same post, its not impossible to see it with the naked eye, explaining that it looks like a bright star about 30 degrees above the horizon that crosses about a quarter of the sky and lasts for two minutes.

They go on: It can very easily be missed or mistaken for a plane. Good passes can be brighter than any other planet or star in the night sky and just barely below the limit to see during the day.

If you want to give it a shot yourself, they pointed us to Heavens Above, where you can find a list of visible ISS passes for the next few weeks, here.

Continued here:

This Guy Took a Photo of the ISS from His Backyard - Futurism

There are those who have been around the block, and then, theres this guy: A 101-year-old Italian man has survived the 1918 flu, a World War, and now, the coronavirus. Whatd you do today?

A patient known as Mr. P was admitted last week to Infirmi Hospital in Remini, Italy after testing positive for COVID-19. Mr. P was born in 1919, as the 1918 flu pandemic which would go on to kill an estimated 600,000 Italians was in full-swing. And on Wednesday night, 101 someodd years later, Mr. P was discharged from the hospital, and taken home by his family.

The Vice Mayor of Rimini, Gloria Lisi, provided a statement to local newspaper ReminiToday about the man. The (incredibly poetic) statement, roughly translated, reads:

Given the progress of the virus, it could not even be called a story like many if it were not for a detail that makes the life of the person returned to their loved ones truly extraordinary.

Mr. P., from Rimini, was born in 1919, in the midst of another tragic world pandemic. He saw everything, hunger, pain, progress, crisis and resurrections. Once over the 100-year-old barrier, fate has put this new challenge before him, invisible and terrible at the same time. Last week, Mr. P. was hospitalized at in Rimini after testing positive for COVID-19. In a few days, it became history for doctors, nurses, and the rest of the healthcare personnel who treated him.

A hope for the future finds itself in the body of a person over a century old, as the sad chronicles of these weeks mechanically tell every day of a virus that is raging especially on the elderly.

Yet, Mr. P. made it. The family brought him home yesterday evening, to teach us that even at 101-years-old, the future has yet to be written.

Per the Hopkins Map, as of this writing, Italy leads the world in COVID-19 infections resulting in death, and is likely to overtake China within the day for total confirmed infections. But their rate of infections continues to slow, and the countrys lockdown appears to be working. The reality of the math is brutal, but Mayor Lisi isnt wrong: The future, as doubly evidenced, isnt entirely bleak, and has very, very much yet to be written.

Originally posted here:

101-Year-Old Man Who Survived 1918 Flu Beats Coronavirus, Too - Futurism

Go Time

The recently-formed U.S. Space Force will actually venture out into orbit for the first time on Thursday.

The mission, which will send a military communication satellite into orbit from Floridas Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, is still on track for its 3 p.m. EST launch, according to Ars Technica. Thats because, unlike other groups like SpaceX and NASA, military spaceports in the U.S. have thus far escaped unscathed by the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the mission has been altered somewhat by the pandemic, even if the launch itself is proceeding as scheduled. Ars Technica reports that the usual fanfare surrounding a rocket launch, like a social media event and other forms of outreach, have been cancelled.

That said, people can still watch the launch if they so desire on this livestream.

If the Space Force mission succeeds, the U.S. military will be able to bring online a new constellation of communication satellites. With the satellite thats being launched today in place, the military will finally be able to replace the outdated network that its been relying on.

Five of the six satellitesin the new network are already in place, Ars Technica reports. Some have been waiting in geostationary orbit for ten full years, as the military has been slowly sending them up since 2010.

READ MORE: For the first time, the US Space Force will actually go to space today [Ars Technica]

More on space: Space Force Working Pretty Closely With Elon Musk and SpaceX

Go here to read the rest:

The US Space Force Is About to Finally Leave the Planet - Futurism

FUTURISTS have revealed what the world might look like once the coronavirus crisis finally comes to an end.

The Sun spoke to two professional futurologists who think we could see the end of the "9 to 5", mass "prepping" and even more people driving cars.

Future-gazing Brit Tom Cheesewright reckons we'll soon see an end to normal working hours.

"Smart companies will realise that human beings aren't robots and let us work in more productive ways," Tom told The Sun.

"That means mapping the working day to your body clock so you get enough sleep. Working in bursts not long stretches.

"And breaking it up with some exercise," he added.

The number of people working from home has risen sharply and it's hard to imagine all office workers reverting to their old life.

So says Ian Pearson, a renowned futurist who thinks we'll see more people spending ditching the commute altogether in a post-coronavirus world.

"Closer to home, with everyone familiar with home working, many will stay at home more often," said Ian, speaking to The Sun.

"So there will be a bit less commuting, with less congestion, less pollution, and lower CO2."

Before 2020, people largely saw "preppers" doomsday-obsessed people who stockpile supplies and build bunkers as a bit nutty.

But Tom reckons the practice of prepping will be significantly more popular in years to come.

"The ultra-rich in the US have been prepping for years," Tom explained.

"It's a point of pride for Silicon Valley magnates that they all have a holiday home/bunker filled with enough tinned food and weapons to survive the zombie apocalypse.

"More people in the UK might now start to follow their example, turning spare rooms over to storage for every eventuality."

Health technology, expertise and techniques have been improved steadily but all health systems struggle under the weight of a pandemic.

Now national health infrastructure is more vital than ever, so Ian thinks much money will be poured into healthcare from now on.

"There is a little re-levelling of attitudes in our class system," said Ian.

"We're being forced to realise which people are really essential in running our society and also that some really are just decoration."Some benefits are political. Everyone right now appreciates the massive efforts of every health care worker looking after victims.

"But once it's over, it is important that the NHS as a whole is reformed to make sure it is much better able to cope the next time, and sadly there will be a next time.

"There will be much greater willingness to reform the NHS and make sure it is fit for purpose, not badly managed, inefficient and poorly focused as it has been."

And one big change could be bad for the environment: a boom in driving.

Tom thinks that more people will be pushed into using their own personal transport, which could make the rise of "green" electric vehicles more important than ever.

"Public transport is a scary place in a pandemic," said Tom.

"People have been turning away from cars for a while, learning to drive later in life. But that trend might slow post-coronavirus with a bump in car buying for those whose finances allow."

You can find Tom Cheesewright at his website, or the Talk About Tomorrow podcast.

And you can find Ian Pearson at his website, or his blog.

TOASTY TESTChina's 'artificial sun' SIX TIMES hotter than real Sun 'to be ready this year'

PLAGUE PITEerie Black Death mass grave with dozens of bodies unearthed after 700 years

SHOOTING STARComet that may be the 'brightest in 20 years' will soar across sky this month

FLU GOTTA BE KIDDING MECoronavirus conspiracies including claims it was 'made by CIA'

POLAR OPPOSITEWarm rainforest covered 'most of West Antarctica' around 90million years ago

THINK PINKRare 'Super Pink Moon' will fill skies next week how to spot it

In other news, we debunk some of the zaniest coronavirus conspiracy theories out there.

Check out our guide to the best apps for working from home.

And criminals are taking advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak bysending scam emailsclaiming to be from the WHO.

Do you agree with these predictions? Let us know in the comments!

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

Link:

Mass home-working and doomsday prepping futurists reveal what life after the coronavirus crisis could look - The Sun

Back in 2018, I had a phone conversation with a so-called futurist called Richard Watson.

He made a number of predictions for the future of travel. He told me that overcrowding will continue to be a huge issue. He predicted that iris ID scans would come in one day, and that social media will soon seem quite quaint.

Amongst his predictions was also the following prophecy: The travel industry will shut down but it will bounce back.

At the time, I remember thinking the idea of global travel shutting down for any length of time was rather fanciful. The idea of things closing for a few days, or perhaps a week, was fathomable. Anything beyond that? Surely not.

We could have some kind of nasty event which shuts everything down, like a pandemic, he expanded. I remember when everyone in airports were wearing masks when SARS happened.

Whats interesting though is that weve had all of those things in the past and the travel industry always bounces back remarkably quickly. So I dont think itll be a long term shift, it might impact travel for six months or a year.

That was then. So what does Watson think about the current situation, and what could come next?

The travel industry is in deep trouble, but its not the first time and it wont be the last, Watson said.

Despite SARS, 9/11, oil price spikes, climate change and the eruption of the Eyjafjallajkull volcano, the leisure travel industry has remained resilient throughout its long history, bouncing back relatively unscathed after numerous short-term shocks.

This time its different, were told, but the industry will still bounce back, because people have a need to get away, to unwind and escape. Indeed, this need could be stronger than ever once this particular storm has passed.

Did anyone see this pandemic coming? Of course. It has always been a case of when not if, and Ive been in numerous workshops where its been discussed, although ironically, it was among terrorism and climate change as an off-limits topic when I was asked to look at the future of travel a decade ago (I declined).

However, its been on my risk radar as a highly probable, highly impactful event. So, what else might be hidden in plain sight that could ground air travel in particular? Here are some thoughts:

Forget Eyjafjallajkull. What would happen if a mega-volcano the size of Yellowstone erupted? The result could be akin to the Year Without Summer back in 1815.

At the moment, the oil price is low, with people even talking about it going negative. But what if the opposite occurred? What if it hit $200+ a barrel before we had time to develop hybrid electric aircraft or create workable bio-fuels in sufficient quantities?

What if terrorists developed novel ways to attack trains, planes and ships? I can think ways, which Im not going to mention, but sustained and effective attacks would shift how and where people travel.

At the moment, a relatively small proportion of Chinese citizens (or Indians, Russians, Brazilians, Indonesians, Nigerians or Mexicans for that matter) holiday abroad. What if this changed? Certain places already restrict tourist numbers, so what if, in the future, you had to book years in advance to go anywhere worth going? This would fundamentally re-draw the tourist map.

Boeing and other plane makers are seriously considering the idea of pilotless planes. Im sure the idea has crossed the mind of Michael OLeary too. Maybe these will be OK. Passenger drones should be safer than small helicopters, but Im not rushing to buy a ticket anytime soon. If this happens I think Ill stay at home or re-discover the joys of passenger ships and long-distance rail travel.

What? We havent got over this one yet, I hear you say. Well Im afraid the growth of the global population, rising urbanisation, intensive agriculture and continued globalisation takes us straight back to when, not if, this happens once again.

Richard Watson is the founder of nowandnext.com.

Continued here:

A futurist told us a pandemic would cancel all travel heres what he says will happen next - Telegraph.co.uk

The U.S. intelligence community seems to be increasingly convinced that China downplayed the severity of its coronavirus outbreak and that it continues to do so.

A classified report that intelligence agencies sent to the White House allegedly concludes that Chinas official tally of coronavirus cases and deaths doesnt tell the whole story, three anonymous officials told Bloomberg. If theyre right, its bad news for other countries that have depended on Chinas data and insight to craft their own responses to COVID-19.

The medical community made interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected, Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist, said at a Tuesday news conference, according to Bloomberg. Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.

Of course, theres reason to be skepticalof this particular narrative the Trump administration has increasingly blamed China for the global pandemic,arguably to draw attention away from its own failures, and dubiously-sourced reports that China deliberately hid how bad things were would be politically convenient.

But ever since the outbreak began last year, dissidents in China have accused the government of censorship, downplaying the risks and severity of the coronavirus, and punishing those who spoke up.

Last week, China made headlines when the epicenter city of Wuhan reported no new cases for several days in a row. Its rapidly-built emergency hospitals have even started to close down as they become unnecessary.

Now the intelligence community is calling that success story into question and along with it much of what weve learned about the viral outbreak.

Excerpt from:

Secret U.S. Intelligence Report: China Hid The Size of the Pandemic - Futurism

Futurist Glen Hiemstra gives us a glimpse at the ways the travel industry may change as a response to COVID-19.

Theres no sugarcoating it. Travel has been hit hard by the current coronavirus pandemic. Much of the world is on lockdown, many people are unable or unwilling to travel, and flights are operating with decreased frequency. The only thing that seems to be getting through all the closed borders and travelbans right now is the virus itself. It can be hard to see beyond this time of near-total grounding to the trip at the end of the tunnel. However, know that the question is not will travel return but what will it look like when it does?

Before we start, its worth saying that no one knows for sure what lies ahead. Futurist Glen Hiemstra, someone who is paid to forecast and help companies prepare for possible future outcomes, points out that we are still too early in this crisis to know much. Its hard to say what the world is going to look like in six months because we know so little about what the world is going to look like in one month. So, think of this as less about predicting certainties and more about forecasting possibilities.

Even now, in the middle of a pandemic, travel is not dead. Its having a rough time, but it is not dead. People are still traveling, though mostly (hopefully) for essential-only purposes. When regular travel returns its likely to come back in stages and it may not look exactly like we rememberbut thats not necessarily a bad thing.

Its hard to say what the world is going to look like in six months because we know so little about what the world is going to look like in one month.

Domestic and overland travel may finally have a big moment as people dip their toes back in and test the waters. (In fact, over a quarter of polled Fodors readers said theyd immediately start traveling domestically when were able to, and 52% said they would start after six months, while heading overseas is on the table for 13% and 33% of them, respectfully.) Domestic travel will likely be easier to accomplish, especially if borders remain tight and travel bans are still in place. Hiemstra adds that there might be an explosion of desire to go to see people like friends and relatives weve been unable to visit while social distancing or on lockdown.

Some of our first getaways might look like camping trips, day trips, visits to national and state parksin other words, minimal-contact domestic vacations where we dont have to risk staying in busy hotel rooms, hanging in crowded public spaces, or traveling on cramped planes.

International travel may not see a large comeback until were able to get a vaccine in our hands (something that scientists say wont arrive until, at the earliest, fall 2021, and even then Hiemstra doesnt think it will become a psychological soother until early 2022), but this kind of self-contained domestic travel has the potential to rebound much sooner. Countries may even encourage it as a way to help rebuild their economy.

When preparing for the future, its smart practice to look at the past. Unfortunately, theres not a lot for us to go on with something like the current coronavirus and COVID-19 situation, especially when it comes to the future of travel. Similar and obvious go-to historical events like the 1918 pandemic of Spanish influenza, the 1929 stock market crash resulting in the Great Depression, and life during both World Wars arent great predictors on how coronavirus may affect travel.

Why not? Well, back then we simply werent the voracious globetrotters we are todaylarge-scale commercial travel and aviation didnt really take off until the 1950s. There also doesnt seem to be too much out there on the economic collapse of 1987 or the Great Recession in 2008 having a deep negative impact on travel. What we can look at, though, are ways that travel changed after the 2001 September 11th attacks.

There might be an explosion of desire to go to see people like friends and relatives weve been unable to visit while social distancing or on lockdown.

Understandably, air travel suffered most after 9/11 since people were afraid to fly. Airlines responded with deeply-discounted airfares, and budget airlines popped up everywhere, including low-cost spinoffs of major airlines like Delta Song. Its possible well see this again, and likely not just limited to flights, in order to entice people to get back out there. Actually, its already happening. Tour operators, cruises, and flights are going for much less than the usual market rates (and offering free changes and cancelations to boot!). What better way to get psyched about travel than by starting to plan a trip for when this is over?

If people do happen to start traveling internationally before a vaccine is developed, theyll likely set their sights on destinations that had little or no trouble with coronavirus, or places with stellar recovery rates. Theres only one problem, depending on how soon this happens: the destinations may not want them there. The fear is real and not unfounded. A recent second wave of coronavirus cases in Asia is heavily tied to an uptick in incoming international travel. To help mitigate a second-wave spread, China announced on March 26, 2020, that it would begin temporarily banning foreign visitorseven if theyre holding valid visas and residence permits.

The one [industry] that will struggle to come back quickly will be the cruise industry, says Hiemstra. For obvious reasons. We have already seen how quickly pathogens can spread at-sea (both with the norovirus and the current coronavirus) and how easily it is to get stuck in a hellish, unexpected quarantine on a ship. Plus, many cruisers are in an older, more vulnerable age group and may no longer want to take the risk. Smaller cruise ships and river cruises take note; this might be your time to shine.

However, Hiemstra isnt counting out megaships just yet since their economics and larger-than-life amenities will be hard to replicate on a small scale. Instead, he said these companiesRoyal Caribbean, Carnival, Holland America, and the likeshould get to work right now retrofitting their ships while theyre out of service.

I could imagine those massive cruise ships being retrofitted so theres a section of 40 or 50 rooms that are essentially quarantinable, he says. So, if somebody gets sick, they can instantly reshuffle and create a kind of quarantine section. He builds out the contingency plan even further by suggesting that they could add a couple more ship doctors, more medical equipment, and different kitchen facilities and staffand then market that as a safety feature to wary cruisers. Other possibilities could be temperature checks as you board, exit at port, and return at port to ensure no one is ill and possibly infectiousand if you are, you move into quarantine. Its not fool-proof, but its something.

Speaking of temperature checks, its a very real possibility that airlines and airports couldor rather shouldrequire routine temperature screenings for passengers before they board a flight. If youve ever traveled during an outbreak, youve probably already experienced walking through body temperature scanners set up before you enter a cautious country. Besides, it would be easy enough to add to the already-annoying, but widely accepted gamut of TSA and security screenings already in place.

Traveling to big cities will always be on travelers bucket lists. People love being pampered, love their spas, and love being lavish so luxury travel will probably still thrive (maybe even more so if it can offer an extra element of promised protection and exclusivity during travels initial reboot). Likewise, adventure travelers probably wont stop exploring the outdoors. In fact, as we speculated with domestic travel, more nature-starved people may follow in their footsteps when theyre out of lockdown.

The immediate future of travel following this pandemic will not only depend on a vaccine becoming available, but also on how well the travel industry can convince us that were safe in their hands.

The immediate future of travel following this pandemic will not only depend on a vaccine becoming available, but also on how well the travel industry can convince us that were safe in their hands. Personal finances will be battered, making affordability a key component in how many people start traveling again and how soon. But the truth is, people will always want a vacation and people will always want to travel, its just going to take us a little while to find our footing and soothe our anxiety once we are given the green light.

The number one benefit of the travel industry, the international travel industry, in particular, has been the knitting together of one world and enabling people to see themselves as part of the world rather than separate from it, Heimstra says.

After weeks of living apart in the present, we cant imagine a better way to spend our future. We hope youll join us when the time comes.

Read more from the original source:

What Will Travel Look Like After the Pandemic? - Fodor's Travel

In the era of Covid-19, the world is expected to stay home and ''cocoon''.

Faith Popcorn, a US futurist who coined the term "cocooning", is on the line to The Money Show with predictions in this time of staying home and self-isolation.

We named that trend in 1981 - the advent of people working from home - and many other products like home delivery, telemedicine.

Now in this time it's coming raging back.

I think there is going to be much more use of online education.Working from home - not going to an office - is going to be much more acceptable. So I think that's going to stay.Alcohol sales - home delivery of alcohol is here and it's gone through the roof.Also marijuana sales here have gone up.

I think retail is going to have more than a little bump. Because people are so excited to walk into a store and touch something, see other people, smell some soap.

Listen to the full interview below.

Get the 10 most-read articles of the week from Bruce Whitfields The Money Show, emailed to you every Friday morning.

Excerpt from:

World-renowned futurist on how the world will change after Covid-19 - 702