There are some interesting couple of developments in the virtual industry profession where telemedicine or telehealth is maybe a Canary in the coal mine for some other businesses. Back in 2019-2020, there were several telemedicine companies that took off that were really big with growth. A lot of it had to do with the pandemic and lockdowns and providing these services without direct human interaction. There were a plethora of companies that did this, Cerebral was a big company that came up with a billion-dollar valuation, and Amazon even had its own telemedicine division. Well, some of these are now starting to deteriorate. Amazon is cutting jobs because it shut down its telehealth service. Cerebral is laying off 20% of its staff for what they call operational efficiencies. Now, there may be more to it than just these stories. Each one of these has its own reasoning behind it. Amazon maybe wasn’t committed to that space and Cerebral has some issues with the way that they did prescriptions maybe didn’t meet the FDA guidelines, according to this article.  

But it does show that there was a big increase in the adoption of virtual services everything from vehicles like Carvana and Vroom to telemedicine companies got a big boost from lockdowns and people staying home. Well now that the lockdowns and the pandemic are essentially over a lot of these companies now have overstayed their welcome and they’re starting to have to shrink their footprint. The question is, will virtual services be the norm, or was it a fad that now people want to see each other in person? 

I suspect that the virtual delivery of goods and services like telehealth and telemedicine, in the long run, will become popular again, but now for the next year or two people are going to have this need and want to see people in person. Look, we’re a social species. We want to see people. There is a convenience factor of delivering it remotely, that’s why we use door dash and other delivery services for groceries, but when it comes to a service where a direct conversation with a person is important like telemedicine, sometimes people want to do that in person, not over a computer screen When you’re ordering groceries, we don’t really need to talk to a person. When you’re talking about your health situation and getting a diagnosis, you may want to see somebody in person or they may need to see you just to diagnose physical conditions. Tell us what your thoughts are and the comments about the future of virtual services being provided. And what do you think is the future of these types of industries?