Cash and 21 Other Everyday Things Wiped Out by COVID-19

By Nicole Spector January 16, 2021

The things you grew up with are on their way out.

The coronavirus pandemic has radically altered nearly every aspect of everyday life that people once took for granted. Activities and commodities that were standard just a handful of months ago have become scarce, if not impossible to access. Everything from paper money and coins to buffet restaurants and live concerts are becoming dim and distant memories for Americans. It’s quite possible that future generations won’t recognize a handshake or any of these 21 other items that are disappearing rapidly.

Cash

Long before COVID-19 battered the globe, e-commerce and the proliferation of payment apps have been replacing cash transactions. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., cash represented just 30% of all payments in 2017. The fear of handling paper money contaminated with the coronavirus has accelerated the digital marketplace. With so many brick-and-mortar businesses closed, there’s a tremendous decrease in in-person transactions.

“Prior to the COVID-19 epidemic, about one-third of Americans under the age of 50 made no purchases in a typical week using cash,” Plamen Nikolov, an assistant professor of economics at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Concerts

Remember dancing up a sweat in a tightly packed auditorium while your favorite band blasted songs from the stage? Hold that memory dear because it could be quite a long time before you have that experience again.

“In the case of the music industry, we have seen a complete stop in the production of live events, however, artists are evolving to offer live streaming concerts,” said Javier Abrego Lorente, CEO at Revolucion Music, an online record label. “In Madrid, we had the first gig in a stadium (WiZink Arena) since the lockdown, where instead of thousands of [people] there were only a few hundred.

This doesn’t cover the costs of the production, but this concert was offered as well via streaming, and tickets for the streaming version could be purchased online, this enables the possibility of increasing the audience virtually and it’s a great example of adaptation.”

In-Person Notary Public Services

Wasting your lunch hour waiting in line at a bank or another office with a notary public is one pre-pandemic hassle that could evaporate even once we enter safer times. For the future, you may not have to leave your desk to have a document notarized, as 26 states have implemented remote online notarization (RON), with more expected to follow suit.

According to attorney Diane Vidal of the law firm of Chiumento, Dwyer, Hertel and Grant, “RON is revolutionary in that it enables a signer to appear before a registered Notary using a simple webcam via Internet-enabled audio-visual programs.

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