The New Normal Is Probably Not Here To Stay
We are still in the middle of the pandemic and already thinking about what will be different afterward. But we might be overstating the lasting effects that the crisis mode will bare for us.
The ongoing Top-10 lists out in the news about what will change after the COVID-Crisis has passed, and life has gone back to a „new“ normal seem very consistent. The lists range from a higher focus on the health care system to a complete transformation of the educational system. The working from home will be the new standard while we will be limiting physical interactions with each other and strive for new standards in hygiene and adopt minimalism but also stock up already for the next lockdowns we will be anxiously awaiting now every year. And masked faces in western cities will be a common sight.
But how much of that will stick to society after things return tot he pre-Corona state, assuming that this will happen anytime?
Although a pandemic of the current magnitude is widely perceived as a singularity for the current generation, looking back at past crises ‘ of the last centuries might show a very fractured picture of what will truly change for good.
A Masked Public Will Be Common
The face-mask now one of the widely postulated remedies to restrict the spread of the Coronavirus will be a common sight in the future years, some predict. But looking back at other pandemics like the Spanish Flu, where cities like San Francisco enforced the wearing of masks in public while California governor William Stephens declared that it was the “patriotic duty of every American citizen.” Not wearing it was fined with $5.
Nevertheless, the face-mask disappeared with the Spanish Flu from the streets of the metropole soon again.
Until the spread of COVID-19, the picture of masked faces in public transports still was more found in Asian metropoles rather than western cities. Even back then, prohibiting mass gatherings and some sorts of social-distancing proved to be the more effective way to slow down the pandemic. Discarding all these measures led to a third wave of the Spanish Flu that hit the Californian City the hardest during the whole outbreak.
We Will Work All From Home Now
Working from home within the current crisis spread to a never-before-seen factor within weeks globally. Although it was a struggle for some and the usual operational mode for others, the pandemic more or less pushed the will rather than the technological and organizational innovations to drive that trend.
Remote work was already a growing „market“ for the last decade. The growth over the previous 12 years was already at 159%, with a 44% growth only in the previous 5 years. It is safe to assume that this rate will be growing after the pandemic has passed but it will
Increased Focus On Health Care
Every crisis has it’s heroes, and for a particular time, they are celebrated in the aftermath, but all heroes at some point will get forgotten. As immediate threads fade, focus on what was imperative in adverting the effects tend to do that as well.
After 9/11, U.S.-Congress awarded the design of an emergency department that was able to treat mass casualties of terrorist attacks as well as infectious diseases and to serve as a nation-wide model. Although the so-called „ER One“ received initial funding of $30 Million, the initiative got lost over the past years. Instead, funding for nation-wide preparedness peaked in 2004 and decreased annually after that until now.
Similar, not very long-lasting measures were put in place and already forgotten a couple of years later after disasters like hurricane Katrina in 2005 as well as the SARS outbreak in 2002.
Even the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act that provided medical treatment to responders and survivors who experienced health complications related to the 9/11 terror attack needed nine years to be passed by both U.S. congress and senate only to cut pending claims by 50% and new claims by 70% nine years later in 2019.
As sad as it sounds, it is likely to see similar disremembering globally in the coming decades after COVID-19.
Earth Will Not End, But The Handshake Might?
In the far not so dangerous times back two months ago, people spend long times on new alternatives to physical greetings that would limit any options of viral transmission. First predicted already the handshake and the friendly hug.
The science-fiction author John Scalzi, while the world started to tumble right into a global epidemic, stuck on a cruise ship saw it’s on the transformation of greeting rituals — from Vulcan and Wakanda salutes to a pure hand wave. After all, any lack of distance will be felt as weird as now in the coming months and with the end of lockdowns. At least a more mutual understanding of distance will arise amongst people.
In the end, though, I suspect a simple wave “hello” will do the trick: an acknowledgment and a sign of potential friendship and an understanding that sometimes a little distance is kind, not rude. (John Scalzi)
We Will Just Be Happy To Go Back To Our Lives As They Where Before
As often observed in human psychology, crisis modes tend to focus the attention on necessities as untroubled times leave room for everything else. And any personal crisis we endure has shown some behavior changes, but mostly we are just lucky to get back to our lives.
Things will feel normal again when they revert to a state we know. On an individual and physical level, most items will be as they have been before, and some changes will remember us of a strange time in 2020 where the world was upside-down. But other than that memory and two or three anecdotes about where we were at that time and what we have done, our realities won’t probably change that much.
All That Is Left — A Better Preparedness
If there is anything we can take away from previous outbreaks, the Spanish or the Hongkong Flu, even 9/11 or any natural disaster in human history, it will change our lives on a lesser scale as we might think. It will be instead discussed by historians than experienced by us as contemporary witnesses.
The best thing we can hope for is a far more sophisticated preparedness, and this will be the most significant change in the aftermath as it has been seen before. The 1920s saw a mostly new approach to the healthcare system as a whole. Russia was the first of the western countries to put in place a public healthcare system, and other European countries like Germany and France followed right after that. Health ministries got revamped in many countries, and the obligation to report infectious decease, failing on that before, was one of the major factors that supported the wide-spread of the 1918 pandemic was put in place.
All measures we can see today that are aimed at protection, wide-spread of the virus, or simply to flatten the curve do originate significantly from the experiences of other pandemics before. If it is not for more work from home or better-funded healthcare systems, at least we will be better prepared for the next great-scale Flu even if it is another ten or a hundred years away from now.
