Is This the “New Normal?”

Well I think it's pretty obvious by now that we (at least in the United States) are going to have to deal with this COVID-19 pandemic for quite a lot longer than we originally hoped or expected to. Despite the fact that we could pretty easily squash this disease while simultaneously saving the economy $1 trillion simply by wearing face masks and practicing social distancing, lots of people just don't want to wear masks, social distance, or believe simple facts from experts.

Just a friendly reminder that President Trump is one of those people. He also suggested injecting people with disinfectant to cure COVID-19. Moving on.

All that said, I've recently realized that it might be time to stop thinking about the present conditions as a temporary thing and start thinking of them more like the "new normal."

Just a few days ago I thought of the "new normal" as being the time after the worst of the pandemic had passed, or even perhaps as being whenever it was over completely. I hung onto the belief that this was all still a temporary thing that was going to wrap itself up thoroughly and neatly, after which the "new normal" would be more or less exactly the way things were before the pandemic, albeit with whatever new lessons learned and repercussions felt from the event shaping the future. Like we'd all feel comfortable gathering in large groups without masks again, but more organizations would let people work from home and a bunch of people would have lost loved ones and/or be living with the permanent damage of surviving the virus.

But then one day I was talking to a coworker and she pointed out that most places are reopening, people are going back to stores and restaurants (with new safety precautions in place), and for the sake of one's own mental health it's about time to cut ourselves some slack and live a little. Then, later that same day, my partner and I ended up having an impromptu hangout (at a distance) with our next door neighbor all night, during which she expressed a similar feeling, adding that while infection rates are rising again, deaths are on a relative decline which could indicate some level of progress.

It was a hard pill to swallow–especially as a father who doesn't want his daughter to get MIS-C or live in a world where she can't hug friends or go out without wearing a mask–but one that I quickly realized was probably overdue. After all, we'd already gone to the zoo (wearing masks and keeping a distance), hung out with more family members (at a distance) and then the aforementioned neighbor (at a distance).

Yeah, I guess it's about time I can stop using parentheses to indicate that we're doing things differently now, because that's just the way things are now. Hanging out at a distance or wearing a mask is no longer the exception–it's the norm. It is literally the new normal.

Nobody really knows how long this thing will last or if it will even have any sort of end date at all. COVID-19 could just be a new virus we and future generations have to live with. After all, it's not like there's a guaranteed cure, and even if there were a cure someday there are plenty of idiots out there who would refuse to take the cure because of some misinformation about the evils of science and needles or whatever.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a cure will be discovered next month and we can all go back to the way things were next summer. Maybe our bodies will quickly adapt to the virus and make it less severe.

I don't know what this revelation means for any of us. I don't know if I'll start going out to do normal things again to any extent or stay inside and hope it all blows over. I just know that there's no sense in not seeing things for how they are.

Stay healthy and sane.

-Ryan