As the world wrestles with the pandemic, here is a compilation of 19 unprecedented shifts unleashed by Covid-19.

/ 1

A huge beneficiary of the pandemic has been mother earth. Global CO₂ emissions in 2020 will erase global emissions growth of the last decade in one clean sweep! Happy Mother’s Day!

/ 2

Reckitt Benckiser, the makers of Dettol, have indicated that they’ll produce as much sanitiser in May 2020 alone, as it did in all of 2019!

/ 3

Hermes’ Guangzhou flagship store in China reportedly did $2.7 million in sales on the very day it opened in April 2020. Attributed to “revenge shopping”, this is the biggest single-day shopping at a luxury outlet in China!

/ 4

Energy consumption is expected to drop off a cliff by falling 6% in 2020. Incidentally, 6% is equivalent to India’s total annual demand!

/ 5

US debt is higher than it was in WW2!

/ 6

WTI (a light sweet crude variety) futures prices slumped into the negative territory, mirroring the fact that the world is sloshing in oil that no one really wants. Sweet!

/ 7

Hello “six feet office”! In a video posted on its website, Cushman has shown the contours of the new office that prioritises social distancing through properly spaced desks and visual signals such as decals embedded in the carpeting around each desk to ensure people don’t get too close!

/ 8

India reported zero vehicle sales for the month of April 2020, which is a first in the history of the automobile industry of the country!

/ 9

Royal Dutch Shell, the oil supermajor, cut its dividend for the first time since WW2, with quarterly dividend payouts dropping off from 47 cents per share to 16 cents. The leadership commentary: “We do not expect a recovery in oil prices or demand for our products in the medium term.”

/ 10

Microsoft Teams witnessed a new daily record of 2.7 billion meeting minutes in one day – yes, one day!

/ 11

The University of Bologna moved 90% of its courses for 80,000 students online within 3 days. Not bad for a 900-year-old institution!

/ 12

Another digital education feat: A Japanese elementary school hosted its graduation on Minecraft, building a virtual assembly hall with seating to boot! Welcome to virtual communities!

/ 13

Zoom pioneered a virtual roadshow for its IPO (initial public offering). Imagine setting valuations over Skype!

/ 14

Berkshire Hathaway, helmed by Warren Buffett, or the ‘Oracle of Omaha’, suffered its worst year against the Benchmark S&P 500 in a decade, recording a $49.7 billion loss in the first quarter of 2020.

/ 15

Instagram had to take the stairs to get 100 million monthly active users in 2 years. Zoom on the other hand was lucky to catch the elevator, getting 200 million monthly active users in just 3 months!

/ 16

Disney Plus amassed a mindboggling 50 million subscribers for its video streaming service in April 2020, just five months after launch. It took Netflix, a video streaming pioneer, 10 full years to reach the same threshold (in 2014).

/ 17

Remote healthcare consultations have boomed, with a record 71% of routine consultations being remote in April 2020 in the UK, compared to just 25% in April 2019.

/ 18

Ravaged by the virus in January and February 2020, the first quarter saw China suffer its first contraction in GDP since the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s.

/ 19

Munich’s Oktoberfest, which draws millions of visitors, has been cancelled for the first time since WW2!