From the earliest moments the scale of The new Coronavirus, and its expansion, became obvious, many of realized this was going to lead to a shattering crisis and would test the resilience of many. Possibly even impact their futures as well.
As countries acted, swiftly or rather slowly, the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t disappoint and totally changed life and lives. For most of us that meant a long #quarantinelife, possibly with loss of jobs, for other it contained health scares or worse, and for others the continued existence of their business was and still is challenged. In each of those three cases, the less gifted ones didn’t make it.
As I am writing this, several countries have started to discuss the actual reopening of life, or to loose up the lockdown. Truth is, at this time, barely any country has an actual understanding of the epidemic or knows the actual state on the ground as only very few countries have reached any scale of mass testing (per capita) and thus has no true information about the spread of the virus.
Thus most countries are very cautious in their approach to loosening their respective lockdowns and many are speaking of the new normal. A new normal which seems to include compulsory social distancing and possibly also forced use of facial masks for the next months to come. At least, until antibody tests are common and countries can force new tracking methods upon us will be more able to determine the herd’s resilience and thus immunity. Or until a vaccine is found.
Any more relaxing loosening up is like walking blindfolded into a forest, leaving millions of people with lesser immunity systems at the mercy of those too confident to follow social distancing rules.
Despite ever louder cries for the economy, and life, to restart, rulers are cautious and with rather good reason. Whoever expects that life will reboot ASAP is deluded or a denialist. And while peer pressure may speed up the further stages of loosening up, assuming no second wave, the truth is that life will reboot slowly and in a different way. The economy just doesn’t support a socially distanced life. Or at least not yet.
Because social distancing, and masks, isn’t just about not getting infected but even more so about not infecting others, the mainstream media and official agencies will continue their drive of spreading fear. An arguably justified drive.
Eventually, it will lead to the normal in the new normal and how we live our lives will have changed. By around 6 feet and with some millimeters of cloth covering around half of our face.
Luckily in the last two decades the Internet has built the foundations for life to change and for economies to adapt to the new social. Amazon is now apparently considered a “utility company” by columnists and opinion writers. And, as if, Netflix and Chill wasn’t enough yet, entertainers now entertain from their sofa with even more live-streams than Facebook and YouTube already offered. And the luckiest amongst us may even see a switch from the cubicle life to a remote workforce as Teams and Zoom have found more and more adoption and the media’s fear drive will lead to increased adoption in life of social distancing.
Leaving one sector at risk of acute extermination, one of the most vulnerable sectors and which has had to lay off thousands of people around the world. While the already doomed retail sector has in most cases been able to switch to a delivery model maintaining many jobs and often even hiring new employees, the hospitality sector has not found such luck. Whether it can even recover in the next months, and years, is now an acute question. Even more so since many people have discovered new joys, joys like cooking at home and even baking bread. All while the fear machine of the MSM and official agencies continue to raise “awareness” in order to avoid a brutal second wave and renewed lockdown when life “reboots”.
In an ever more gentrified world, habits have changed, in last two to three decades, and while this has often seen a massive increase in eating out, the cost of gentrification has also let to many restaurants operation at very small profit margins. The ever changing world of streaming and always more “closed” socializing has also led to ever less bars and pubs surviving the changed culture.
Restaurants, and bars, were among the first to have to shutdown as the pandemic hospitals our lives, often having to write off thousands of stock all while facing months of continued and often ridiculously high leases for the premises. Staff was laid off almost immediately and many who tried out the delivery model discovered that it wasn’t economically for them. We have seen creative models such as outlets who switched to deliver recipes with the ingredients, but they have been far and between and more often than not didn’t generate the required volume either to continue to operate. Others have adopted much simpler menus, often not necessarily benefitting their reputation and standards they set out to to bring to your table.
A table now replaced by your kitchen table and covered with homemade meals.
Even assuming that in some months the hospitality sector may be able to reopen, hire staff again, and stock up the question to be asked is whether people will want to go out again and pay a (hefty) premium for things from the old normal. A premium which may be ever more as the disposable levels of many (former) employees may have changed and others are too busy saving for their deferred rents, utility bills, and maybe even to pay back their Trump bucks.
Will you even enjoy socializing after social distancing has become an integral part of your life? Will you enjoy the atmosphere in a socially distancing compliant restaurant and your food is brought by a masked waiter? Or will you prefer to order (franchised) pizza and Netflix and chill instead?
Of course, if you’re one of many thousands Instagram fashion influencers you will enjoy the free chair to put your handbag on. Of course, you will.
That is what Corona is teaching us.People should get back to the new normal of living a life fulfilling the necessities.
Maybe some good could come of this and we wont live in such a consumerism world and people will learn to focus on what really matters.
Probably not tho
It would be nice but I'm not holding my breath.
It already has , at least I feel so - We are now habituated for full time home made foods, we are not going out, if not needed absolutely ( and it saves money and time), we are now doing our own work etc etc.
And the humanity put a deaf ear on global worming - so may be Nature brought its own heal, who knows, if we don't realize, it will bring more such to us.
Yeah true. Probably wont last thought people will be back to their big screen TVs and flash cars in no time and this will be just a distant memory
This is something I've thought a bit about... how many people will inwardly recoil at the greeting hug of a friend they haven't seen for a while? I'm pretty sure I will. I'll be glad to see them of course, and glad to receive that hug, but I'm sure I'll also feel a bit more unclean or in danger for doing so.
On the other hand, this shakeup might have been good for us... going to a restaurant for dinner was once a special occasion event, and for many people have become an almost nightly ritual. We have a few friends that had never made a meal in their kitchen until the pandemic hit. Does the population or the environment really need to accommodate these excesses?
I'm still considering getting a "selfie-stick". Not because I take any selfies at all but they seem practical to guarantee others socially distance, especially if automatic telescopic models.
The hospitality sector is a mess. Gentrification and venture capital investments have totally changed the sector and destroyed a lot of the atmosphere. Not to mention the "special" activity it once was. The irony is that it's at the same time backed by ridiculous prices and staff is still underpaid and must "beg" for tips. Real estate needs to be fixed first, but the Middle East and China love investing in it.
"Whoever expects that life will reboot ASAP is deluded or a denialist. " Tell that to all the Americans with the "live free and die" mindset.
Interesting! The trade off between saving the economy and saving lives. The longer lockdown goes on the more businesses will fall and thus more people lose their livelihood leading other problems such as depression etc. Its tough.
Here in New Zealand we are nearly at the end of a 4 week complete lockdown and will be moving to ´level 3´ next week which means much the same but a few more businesses will open and we will hopefully transition back to some form of normality. Like you say though we have no idea of the true scale of whats out there - they are doing some random testing which has come back all negative which is encouraging, but there could be many people flying under the radar with the virus still.
I feel that as these lockdowns ease people will easily forget how bad this could become and become a bit slack with the social distancing and head backwards - some will be back to lockdown in no time.
Denialism of spread and potential harm by covid-19 is massive. Even more so now it seems measures taken are actually working and slowing the strain on hospitals.
If I remember correctly, South Korea initially estimated x8 underreported cases. Recent initial larger scale anti-bodies Tests (in California) seem to hint at possibly x40-x80.
Yea loads of countries around the world have no idea of the true spread of Covid-19 due to a massive lack in testing! Will be interesting to see what happens with the numbers over the coming months.
New normal is quickly bringing everyone down to my level 😁
Leaving the house isn't something I do often. When I'm out in the world, the powerchair takes up quite a bit of space even if I don't require an assistant
If everybody wants to stay spread out and we get increased delivery options.... it's all winning for me! lol
The bigger impacts are scary to consider, but my little world feels like it's growing