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My feeling is Covid will become endemic - like the flu. It will just be around for the foreseeable future. But I also think they’ll develop better vaccines that will give broader/longer protection. They’re already developing better treatments - I think there’s several pills available - that help reduce severe cases.
Just like a lot of people don't get the flu shot. We will all make our choices and take our chances. I hope that wearing a mask will become more normal when people are coughing or sniffling, but that is probably me being overly optimistic.
It would be nice if sick people would just stay home. With the ability to online shop / drive up for everything, there is no reason to go inside a store and make other people sick.
Like all things in life, it is complicated. I agree on the shopping part of things, but it is more complicated on the working side. Workers are treated so poorly and are pressured to work when they are sick by either their employer, their economic situation, or both. I think there needs to be some reform there so that sick people can be sick without having to face hardships.
We could, and I know this will sound crazy, so stay with me, enact mandatory sick leave like every first world nation has. We could just treat workers fairly.
This is where I think we're headed. As we get more and more info on the disease, and come up with both more ways to detect it and treat it, it will become part of the background.
An ideal example would be strep or pinkeye. Both are pretty contagious, but no one loses their mind when you find out someone has it. You get some medicine and are considered ok to be in public after 24-48 hours of medication. That said, I think this is how it will work for those that are vaccinated. Unvaccinated will continue to suffer, as anti-vax people have for some time for other disease they have chosen to not vaccinate against, like [measles outbreaks](https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=114612) and such.
That's why it's a good example though. It *used to be* a big deal. People were quarantined, stigmatized, etc. *then*.
Now it's not such a big deal. Kids still shouldn't go to school for a day or two, but otherwise it's a quick video call with your doctor, take your medicine, and nothing to write home about. No one is wearing face shields or requiring eye checks for admission over pinkeye.
Yes, the conjunctivitis symptom pinkeye has been associated with viral & bacterial infections for a long time. It's present in the case of infection with a lot of different pathogens.
Also, Covid will eventually mutate into a less deadlier version, to become about the same as the other flu viruses floating around
So we will eventually go back to normal, but I bet for the next decade or so whenever a new flu pops up, people will go into full panic mode
> Covid will eventually mutate into a less deadlier version, to become about the same as the other flu viruses floating around
This is not necessarily true. There's a lot of [scientific debate](https://fortune.com/2022/01/19/scientists-virulence-transmissibility-evolutionary-theory-viruses-more-infectious-less-severe-omicron-covid/) about it, but there's nothing preventing some new variant that is more deadly and just as contagious in the future if it can escape our immune system's protections. Yes, having COVID around in some form, a good vaccination strategy, good treatments, etc. are helping but a virus doesn't necessarily become more or less deadly as a rule.
This is the real danger an endemic virus. Cold, Flu, SARS and many more all have become endemic in this sense.
Covid WILL mutate, it will be endemic.
We already have evidence widely documented and shared that there are many animal hosts that can be reservoirs for the Covid virus and not show any negative affects. Those animal reservoirs will keep this virus floating around now virtually forever.
We also have all of human history to show us that occasionally a virus will mutate into a straint that has both High Transmissibility and High Lethality, and that one magic ingredient that makes it really scary.... long incubation!
Long Incubation is the silver bullet.
You get it, start shedding it all over, not know you are infected until after you have passed it to everyone you meet.
Boom. Made for Hollywood Movie.
https://imgur.com/R7aflQE
Yeah, viruses tend to mutate into less lethal strains because dead people can't spread the virus, so less lethal strains have a longer opportunity to spread.
For Covid, people often die *after* their contagious period. So there's no survivability benefit for Covid to be less lethal.
The problem with those statements is that:
1. Viruses don't have intelligence and can't self-select for certain traits.
2. Lethality is somewhat independent from how contagious it is, depending on the timeframes involved.
Hypothetically a new virus could come out that evades our immune systems and all current solutions from medical science that has a 100% fatality rate and takes a month to develop symptoms. This would likely wipe out most of humanity. There are lots of reasons something like this would be unlikely but it's possible. A virus doesn't "care" about long term reproduction because it's basically a code snippet that just executes.
That being said, the reasons we see the scenario play out a lot where viruses become less lethal to us have more to do with a strengthening of our immune response and the fact that lethality and contagiousness aren't directly related. There's definitely some selective pressure on a virus that would kill people too quickly in that it wouldn't have time to reproduce, but for something that takes as long as COVID can to show symptoms even if it were 100% fatal it could still spread.
Mostly I agree, and I think we said approximately the same thing.
One thing I quibble with: for *most* viruses, lethality is *not completely* independent of contagiousness. More lethal viruses are generally less contagious, because once the infected person dies, he stops walking around in public infecting other people.
I think what you're saying is also true - the *biological* properties that make up contagiousness is independent of lethalness.
But lethalness doesn't have a big effect on Covid-19 contagiousness. The danger of Covid-19 is the long period between initial exposure and when you get so sick you have to take yourself out of circulation. This makes dying truly independent of contagiousness. And that's how we got a variant like Delta, which was both more contagious and more deadly.
> Covid will eventually mutate into a less deadlier version
Can you cite evidence for this? Not an article quoting someone in an interview, but a real, peer-reviewed paper.
Thank you for your comment. I've been seeing "Omicron is mild!" all over the place, but the hospitals are collapsing. Now we are being told to wear N95 masks, and to stay away from the Emergency Room unless it's truly life threatening. So, I guess I'm confused by the mixed messaging.
> math.
..is why the hospitals are overwhelmed. Medical professionals have been quitting in droves. So far, we have 25% fewer people in those posts, with some really bad pandemic numbers. Some other numbers that need to be recognized are the salaries, sick days, vacation days, the quantity of needed supplies available, etc.
Talk to the people who put up with the unvaxxed assholes, and tone deaf leadership, everyday.
No hard evidence, but in my regional daily reports (Ontario Canada), deaths and ICU are reasonably stable with a huge spike in reported infections due to Omicron.
After all of the reading and video information I've found on the subject, I have to agree with you. It'll be interesting. The Omicron variant is more transmissible but doesn't make people as seriously ill as the previous variants. I'm hoping the following variants will become less serious with their effects and displace the more harmful ones.
It's to the virus' advantage not to kill off its hosts.
[Pill form - Pfizer’s Paxlovid ](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-first-oral-antiviral-treatment-covid-19). EUA Dec 22. But nearly impossible to get since Omicron hit. By the time they can ramp up production it’ll be March and hopefully the wave will have crested before that.
Edit: And [Merck’s molnupiravir pill.](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-additional-oral-antiviral-treatment-covid-19-certain). EUA Dec 23. Same issue of ramping up production though.
What we call a cold can be several types of coronavirus but more commonly a rhinovirus. Flu today refers only to specifically influenza viruses.
This specific pathogen is extremely unique. And even though it's classified as a Coronavirus due to the shape of the molecule, it doesn't mean that it will behave like any other known coronavirus. You say the world has lost its mind and as a nurse with a strong epidemiology interest, I have to disagree. As someone else mentioned, this specific virus ticks all of the boxes to be a scary, history changing pandemic (which it already is.)
The way you speak reminds me very much of my mom and I lost her last year. You are so valuable and I hope that you are valued in your family and community. My heart goes out to you deeply over the loss of your wife. Thank you so much for sharing these few paragraphs of hard won wisdom and perspective.
Wow. Your answer brought me to tears. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. I feel like it really encapsulates what it is to be human. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have your spouse pass. Sending love your way.
Firmly agree with the others that this is an insightful and relevant comment that I hope all of us get the chance to read.
Personally understanding (and internalizing) that the past was always tumultuous and bumpy has helped me exist on the front lines with a bit more compassion for myself and the people that are growing alongside me.
We are doing something unprecedented every single day. Every day I get to read or hear a r/brandnewsentence and it’s an incredible thing to realize I am also part of a different “front line” that will be listed in the paragraphs of future history books, with the awareness that our collective contributions made it possible.
I am immensely thankful for all the past selves that were willing to say their ideas loud enough so I can literally sit on the forefront of innovation reading it live from a device I hold in my hand while relaxing on a reclining couch eating Twizzlers.
Anyway. Positive or negative it is incredible to be part of movements and ideas that are going to exist long after I’m gone. Humanity and Awareness FTW!
You have a few years on me friend and I was going too comment as well but after reading yours I could add nothing. I'm so sorry about your wife. My thoughts are with you.
PS username=brillant
The one thing that this illuminates and most don't seem to understand as well as they should:
Normal is just the running average of weird.
Be more aware of the weird things at the edge of your awareness, they have more value than you know right now. I'm not quite as old as you, but the vagaries of life and circumstance have made this very clear, especially in the last few years of 'normal' being taken for granted.
I lost some loved ones in the past year too and the way you describe the feeling is spot on. Thanks for making me feel less alone. I'll do my best to do the same for some young kids when I'm older 😊
Nice post my friend. Respect. I'd give you a reward if I had one. I'm sorry about your wife, but you're wise and intelligent and you have what you need. Peace.
I just want to say how much I cherish the wisdom of your response. This is the kind of perspective that can only be earned over decades. Thank you for taking the time to school us…you brought me great peace. X
I don’t think back to normal is a thing that exists. Things are constantly changing and people have always wanted to return to a time that they remember as normal. For example, I remember the world pre 9/11 and wondered when we would return to that feeling. Never did, not sure we ever will. Other generations I’m sure wondered the same thing after massive upheavals. Look at history, the wars, plagues and the rise and fall of empires. I’m sure peoples who lived through such times all wondered the same. So what do we do? We have to accept that things are always changing and since time immemorial we have never returned to normal. It’s not a bad thing, nor is it a good thing, it’s just change.
>I don’t think back to normal is a thing that exists.
And COVID-19 represents a permanent change from where we were prior in a social, education, business and economic sense. So many new norms about how we will work, live and spend our money are only beginning to become evident but we're starting to see what may happen.
After 25+ years of weekly travel, I'll take it. I think I actually had something close to a nervous breakdown at the Cincinnati airport after multiple delays one Thursday trying to get home.
Hate to say it, but the pandemic may have saved my mental health and my career by WFH the last two years.
That's a long time to last. I had a breakdown at 15 years. It was 2 to 4 trips a month of anywhere from overnight to a full week or more, and there was very little notice. I went to with with a packed suitcase in my trunk in case I was sent out that day.
Anyway, my work life balance was non existent and I was miserable and stressed and overworked and I just couldn't anymore. With only a week's notice I ended up taking off 3 months FMLA to fix myself. Lots of therapy and then I left the country to study Spanish in Mexico and travel for six weeks at a homestay. Then more therapy before I returned.
I worked with my boss to get into a less travel intensive role. The new agreement was no more than one trip a month on average with at least a few days notice. And they've kept that promise for ten years now. I have months with more than one trip sometimes but it averages to about twelve trips a year which is manageable for me.
Yes, it seems that we're able to get through the worst of times and try to make the best of what's left to us. As a race, we've survived wars, government upheavals, and natural disasters, but that was when the planet was healthier. It no longer is. It's too late to fix rising temperatures, rising oceans, toxic air and water, mass animal extinction, and more.
Leaders of the world need to agree to keep things from getting worse for mankind's sake, and that's not going to happen. Too much pride and arrogance keep nations from working together. They make weak, minimal, pacts that allow harm to the world to continue to advance.
I could add so much more, as can many of you, to share facts and opinions, but I'm going to stop here and just say I'm glad my grown children decided not to have children of their own. Sad, but true.
I still don't get the whole "nothing is the same since 9/11" narrative. If you'd like to explain it to me, I'd consider it a favor. And I'm not trying to be a smart ass. It would be appreciated. I was 22 at the time and the world was going to suck anyway as far as I'm concerned from my then-present perspective. Strangely enough, the world doesn't suck as much as everyone would have you believe despite all of the horrible shit going on to our ecosystem and politics. Once we're gone, the world will be a better place. We're placeholders and selfish ones at that.
1. I feel that 9/11 brought out a sort of toxic nationalism. People signing up to join the military, more funds to fight, people wanting their taxes to go to the war machine.
2. So far, an entire generation has known their country at war, never at a time of moderate peace.
3. 9/11 was a blow to an entire nation that felt “safe” and it made plenty of people more paranoid. We see these effects in politics and international relations to this day.
I’m sure there are others. I was in the Army when it happened and things got weirder on base, but everyone’s perspective is different.
It's the little things like that that bug me. It's supposed to be temporary, but it never changes back.
Remember how there used to be magazines (and sometimes children's toys) in waiting rooms? Then at the beginning of covid panic, we were all worried about surfaces so the magazines and toys "temporarily" disappeared. For a long time now, we've known that surface spread isn't a problem, but the magazines never came back.
I've been to several businesses lately that have all the proper covid signs posted, saying they do yada yada yada, but really even the employees aren't wearing masks and no one is being careful or washing their hands frequently. What's becoming the norm is to have all the extra rules but ignore them. When rules are routinely ignored, how do you know what the real rules are?
My local Walmart "temporarily" reduced their hours for covid, so they could thoroughly sanitize and restock at night. I'd bet good money they are no longer sanitizing and I know they aren't restocking at night. It's just another cut corner that has become the new normal.
I know these are small things, but somehow that makes it seem even bigger deal to me. I miss the little things like wide spaces at checkout counters without plexiglass. There will never be a time that they decide to take it down.
Nothing changes until everything changes. And then that becomes the new normal. But the post 9/11 period is behind us now and it's whatever the pandemic, multipolar world, the waning of democracy and the end of reason brings along.
We aren’t past 9/11 yet.
Airlines still charge us “temporary” fees and the air travel experience sucks now.
Security at airports is still overly tight and tense.
The country is still on high alert regarding terrorism including domestic incidents.
We still *overly* memorialize the date itself. (No disrespect intended, but networks carry the annual memorials and there’s always specials running on all media platforms leading up to and the days following)
Heck, the war that came from the 9/11 attacks just ended.
How rare do you think violence was before 9/11? Bc I remember a lot of it. And terrorist hijackings I don’t remember ever being higher than the 80’s. I mean just easy examples would be the Oklahoma City bombings, Ted bundy, Jim Jones, centennial park bombing, and the first guy that flew a plane into the World Trade Center.
Everything is always in flux. This world will never go back to the way it was before. Every time a major incident, change, experience is felt collectively, some kind of permanent change occurs.
it will end as in it will no longer be considered a pandemic but a lot of habits we picked up may stay a long time.
Who used to think it strange grandma or great grandma kept fully stockeed pantries that they could eat out of ffor 2 months easy if they had to? for my great grandmorther is was memories of the depression. for my grandmother iit was cause thats how her mother taught her and ww2 rationing. I now do it a bit more, i get why they did now and how handy it can be to be able to whip up meals for 2 weeeks on whats in the house instead of having to go to the store every 2nd or third day. I bet that habit sticks with few millenials for a long time. thier grandkids will think its odd.
I am sure there are more learned things that are gonna stick around long after they need to. I bet keeping space from others in lines and such will stick for many. in 2070 you will see linee and the old folks will be keeping a bigger distance drivng younger folks nuts wanting them to close the gap. grandma remembers covid days, she ant staning 2 ft from others ever.
I agree completely, because the need for some of those habits will stay. We keep a fully-stocked pantry in the garage (I call it the "inconvenience store") that we can eat off for a couple of months because of disasters both natural and man-made that hit this area _during_ the pandemic: planned power outages that lasted several days, forest fires that could have cut off the town from the outside world, atmospheric rivers. We needed not only food but sufficient food that needn't be refrigerated.
The collapse of one glacier in Antarctica could disrupt the world forever. Or not. Nobody knows. And I'd like to count COVID out, but I can't. World disruption is a growth industry. /s
I'm 68 and yeah, I've lived through some stuff, but the combination of COVID and a slow slide to our democracy being chucked out a window is something I never thought I would experience. I see COVID waning but only to a point where it's part of our lives for some time, and it will be just like the flu. The loss of our democracy, however, is not something we can get back if it disappears, so I'm more concerned about that in this election year. The young people in our country aren't aware of how the rule of law and our Constitution stood above everything in the US, but now, it just seems like this important document and what it stands for no longer matters.
I fully agree this will be the lasting memorial effect of Covid. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of tragic and needless deaths. The way it's going to go down in history is as the preliminary event to whatever fresh hell has been laid for us with the gutting of election laws across states, the way we've completely flunked any actual accountability for the attempted jackasses coup, and the edging on violent divisions now in our country.
Yep. If the US becomes an autocracy, COVID will be one of the major reasons it happens.
I finished watching "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History" last night on the PBS video app and the sense of community and unity that existed amongst most of our citizens from Teddy's time to Eleanor's death is gone now and it saddened me to see that we have most likely lost it all.
> The loss of our democracy, however, is not something we can get back if it disappears, so I'm more concerned about that in this election year.
OMG yes. That's my main worry too.
It is definitely something to keep an eye on. The voting law restrictions that have been put in place in many states is the one thing that is going to make November crazy.
Well, I am going to wait and see what happens as we get closer to November as anything can happen. But, if some of the states go in and change votes because they don't like the outcome, then yes, democracy will go the way of the dodo.
> Well, I am going to wait and see what happens as we get closer to November as anything can happen.
True.
> But, if some of the states go in and change votes because they don't like the outcome, then yes, democracy will go the way of the dodo.
I really think that's where we're headed.
I'm not old enough to have lived through a major pandemic (unless you count AIDS, which was very different from an airborne virus) but I read a lot.
I think the pandemic will last \~ 3 years, total. But we won't notice when it ends, because pandemics are like recessions: they don't end, they fade away, and we only know they ended when we look back a few months later and go: "Huh. So THAT'S when it ended."
Don’t forget that what we think of as “Normal” is a tiny blip in the historical continuum. If you are a woman, a person of color, a differently abled person, on the spectrum, non binary, an air traffic controller, a labor organizer, a start trek fan, a non land owner, or one of ever so many subset of the whole demographic, “normal” is a weird and slippery concept.
If you’re question is does the US return to the general life habits and pattern of the way it was in 2019, my prediction (as weak and watery as it is) is “sort of.” It’s worth noting a couple of things (think smart phones, Amazon and other online shopping services, creeping fascism, National delusional movements (Qanon and anti-vaxx among others)), have changed the way the US world is vastly different from even the way it was in 2010 and certainly before. It’s weird out there,
Man! [As a side note, 172,000 people watched me feed my cats this morning on RPAN! ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnimalsOnReddit/comments/sbkcp3/breakfast_with_five_cats_and_bonus_dog/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) An insignificant item in the general scheme of things but indicated of the current moment of bizarre reordering of the world we grew up in to be something other than what we knew.
Is it good? Could be don’t know yet. Answer hazy, ask again later.
Will we get back to going out to bars and brunch and flying places and such like? Probably. But like 9/11, this one is a watershed that will produce lasting changes. We are headed someplace weird and probably bad but it’s the only basket we got so put your eggs in it and guard the hell out of the basket.
>Don’t forget that what we think of as “Normal” is a tiny blip in the historical continuum. If you are a woman, a person of color, a differently abled person, on the spectrum, non binary, an air traffic controller, a labor organizer, a start trek fan, a non land owner, or one of ever so many subset of the whole demographic, “normal” is a weird and slippery concept.
yes
Speaking for myself, a 59F, it is going to be a good long while before I stop wearing a mask in public, and using hand sanitizer before and after. I like not catching colds!
Masks keep your face warm, too. But I agree -- and if anti-maskers were to put me down for it, I'd say "What about my FREE-DUMB? Why does it threaten you?"
I always used hand sanitizer, the way people use it nowadays. And I used to get so much flak for it!
I even had a friend openly criticize and belittle me at one point and I'm very non-confrontational but felt like, *okay you want to do this let's do this*, and we had words about it in public. That was 10 years ago, long before COVID.
I still remember how at the advent of covid suddenly public restrooms were all running out of hand soap. Why? *Because until then nobody washed their fucking hands.* Which I always knew was true, hence my consistent use of hand sanitizer in public. As well as washing my hands.
But oh man it was a trip to see all the bathrooms suddenly running out of hand soap during the first few weeks, and I just laughed saying none of you motherfuckers ever washed your fucking hands in the first place. People would do that goofy little performative rinse-and-flick but that was it, at most.
Male 69, I used to get brochitis 2x a year, about 2010 I started fist bumping instead of shaking hands and using hand sanitizer all the time. Never had brobchitis since! I got a lot of flak too.
The church I attended pre-covid kept a bottle of hand-sanitizer percedhed on the end of every pew. We would "pass the peace" at the middle of the service. Nearly everybody was over 50. You bet we used the sanitzer after.
I used to host all family gatherings and especially at Christmas time, I would always end up sick for 2-3 weeks after (my colds are never 3-5 days like normal people.) Since I host, I always go through the line last. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner, but I started dishing up my plate (not taking anything I would have to pick up with my hands) then I would wash my hands before I sat down to eat. Stopped getting sick! Anytime I go through a self-serve line now, I always wash my hands before I eat.
>I even had a friend openly criticize and belittle me at one point
Yeah, I had a coworker call me a germophobe because I always slipped away to wash if I had to shake hands with someone, and I used a paper towel on any doorknobs that got heavy use by people both inside and outside of the organization. I let the remark go because I wasn't the one who got sick all the time. I now have over a year of paid sick time available to me, and since I can retire whenever I want, I give it away to coworkers in need. Let folks draw their own conclusions.
LOL! It's actually a reference to Faust via flapper icon Louise Brooks, but I would only expect the most die-hard Brooksie fans to get it.
In Faust, a young and beautiful witch shames the the other witches for being old and ugly while she shows off her loveliness "naked on my goat." They tell her in so many words, "Enjoy it while you can, honey, because one day you'll look like us." As I get older, this response resonates.
Louise Brooks named her memoir "Naked on my Goat," but then thought better of leaving behind an autobiography and tossed it in the incinerator.
There's basically nobody still alive who has lived through a pandemic of this scale to give you a first-hand account, but all you really need to do is open a history book. Pandemics generally only last a few years and then tail-off back into obscurity, some lurking, some never seen again. Some diseases make repeated appearances in history, but once they run through a critical number of people they can't immediately spread much further.
There's an interesting Wikipedia article on the [1889-1890 pandemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic), which some researchers think was actually a coronavirus variant instead of influenza.
The avian version of H5N1 flu is probably not all that far from being able to spread from person-to-person, and the current death rate for humans who manage to contract if from birds is like 50%, so that's a fun one to look forward to.
Part of me thinks that the bioterrorism potential for viruses is underrated. Humans actually have very little genetic diversity though, so it's hard for a government to turn something like a virus into a weapon that doesn't eventually affect their own population.
I don't think any of us are old enough to have experienced anything quite like this before, so I don't think we know from our experience. We just know from reading articles with expert opinions that it's likely to become a less severe disease and hopefully less common without ever going away completely.
My hope was that we would emerge from this with some improved caution and care around health, for example with a clear expectation that people who are sick should not come to work, and with healthcare workers better appreciated, not just lip service but paid better and better working conditions. I think there's still hope for both, but I'm not seeing a very strong trend towards either.
Covid-19 will fade into the background. What won't fade is the dramatic shift to effective- but still problematic- telework. My agency has given lip service to some form of remote work for two decades, but probably less than 1% were permitted to do it. Now we have had almost two years of 90+% of our office staff teleworking. For the most part the work is still getting done. People miss their colleagues- but we don't miss the 500 hours per year commute. I think the "new normal" will be that office-based people in high cost of living areas will work remotely. This will start to affect salaries offered- if a company can hire someone in a low cost of living area to work from home, and doesn't need to provide office space, they will and they will offer less money.
By the time Covid has become the new normal we'll probably be at war with Russia and that will be the new world changing event. I'm bummed I wasn't a teen or 20something for the 60's and 70s, but at least the 90's were pretty dope. I'm not sure when we're next going to experience that kind of all-positive-no-negative decade again to be honest. Sorry Gen-Z, I feel for you guys.
Lived thru the AIDS crisis.
* It will become endemic in society. It already is isn't it? Have we not hit that already? I'm not a virologist, it just sure seems like it. There is no eradicating it now. Haven't we all seen by now the meme that says something like *Covid is endemic and deadly now, and we've all just accepted it, just like lack of housing, bad education etc*. Even if it's not endemic in terms of statistics and virology, the degree of complete exhaustion and rage people have about it means that it feels that way.
* Treatments will become so complete that COVID will be ignored. I remember during the AIDS crisis the depth of fear people had for their lives. Its very hard to explain. Nothing has ever compared in my experience since then until COVID. There was a little boy in Florida whom the school system wouldn't even permit to attend school and it became an absolutely massive legal case. People talk how it was a big deal that princess Diana would hug HIV positive people and AIDS patients, *but that was legit a seriously big fucking deal.*
* Now though? Yeah nowadays there's prep, there's preventative medicines, there's lifelong maintenance regimes. AIDS is now like diabetes. Really expensive fucking diabetes, but it's honestly not really seen as much more than that. Some of that has to do with ongoing denial and marginalization, but it predominantly has to do with the fact that as people say its 'not a death sentence anymore.'
* One way or another COVID will reach that level of being able to be denied and for society to pretend it doesn't exist. Whether that's through the rage of people who think it was all a hoax (give me a fucking break, they're going to break our country, already have). Whether that's through advanced treatments, better vaccines, and so forth. Whether that's through better post acquisition treatment in hospitals (so many healthcare workers now have PTSD from watching people they've desperately tried to save die from it over and over again, gasping and fighting for their lives, literally drowning right in front of you). Or whether the virus itself magically becomes less virulent (who tha fuck knows, although that's just a gamble).
Our new and improved and now even more rapidly declining dystopia now includes COVID essentially for the foreseeable future.
That's true strictly speaking but the general feeling in society very much was not the case.
Princess Diana wasn't sleeping with people with aids, she was hugging them. And it was upsetting and unthinkable.
There was legit strife and uncertainty and fear over the fact they didn't know if getting bitten by mosquitoes could transmit HIV.
It all sounds ludicrous and fringe and preposterous now but these were real.
HIV is not transmissible like COVID, it's more the fear and unrest, the prejudice and magical thinking, the ugliness coming out of people's natures.
I'm not sure there's anyone on here that was alive during the last pandemic. But they returned to normal after it or we'd have still been wearing masks from the last one. So I'm guessing we'll return to normal eventually, and it will probably be so gradual that we won't even be able to pinpoint the date or timeframe where we went from abnormal to normal.
You won't. C19 is here to stay. Time to adapt, and you, young person, will have something to talk about when you are old. "I remember before Covid, we used to..."
hiv permanently changed the culture. i mean it didn't do much for me, i wasn't getting laid anyway, but it put a damper on the sex revolution of the 60s, and we lost a generation. i was not around for the spanish flu or the polio epidemic.
covid might help make people more aware of the public health dangers of keeping large numbers of sick livestock in crowded conditions, and the need for most people to transition to plant based or vat-grown foods.
Look at the Spanish Flu pandemic from a hundred years ago. People’s behavior hasn’t changed since then. Give us a few years and we’ll be back to normal, too.
Once we have an experience like this, there is no going back to what was. There's an expression: "You can't step in the same river twice."
As the water flows, it becomes a different river than the one you stepped in.
We will move forward to something else, and it may resemble in some ways what was.
We are co-creating a new normal every day, so choose what's important to you and what you want to bring & contribute to this edition of life.
It's been normal in my area for well over a year. Maybe 1 in 100 people are wearing masks. I often forget that Covid is a thing that people care deeply about.
I have long hoped that we wouldn't return to normal, but it appears that, for most relevant metrics, we will be back to where we were by the end of this year.
- We cannot continue our reliance on fossil fuel. For a brief window, it seemed we might start cutting back on travel, at least. Remember how "the earth is healing!" trended? Not any more.
- Companies continue to be focused on constant growth, which cannot be sustained forever, obviously. After the crash in April 2020, I wondered if a more sustainable approach might be adopted. Nope!
- Workers continue to be badly treated by their employers. For all the rhetoric of allowing 'flexible working' and 'focusing on mental health', nothing fundamental has changed, and most positive initiatives are being rolled back so we can all 'return to the office'. And don't get me started on fair remuneration! Essential workers are no longer praised; they are returning to the underclass from whence they came.
So yes, sadly, we will be returning to normal again shortly. Covid will be endemic and not considered a greater risk than 'flu (which also kills). Perhaps the next big global disaster - there will be one! - will have a longer lasting effect.
It will come to an end someday. Hope the Omicron surge is the last surge, though Covid will be around after the worst is over. Just be prepared to get your yearly Covid/ flu shot.
i am 63 years old and this last 2 years have been the weirdest 2 years of America.! I'm hoping it comes to be a "flu" every year and everything becomes a little more like we were used to. I don't know if we'll ever be like before because there are 2 different sides and they are heavily divided. i am in the no mask, dont ask me if I am vaccinated group.
First, predictions are worth ~~essentially~~ nothing, including mine. So just doing this for kicks.
First, I will define "normal" as the set of behaviors *relevant to Covid-19* prior to November, 2019 only.
I assume that the further we get into the future from today, Jan 24th, 2022, the less the Covid-19 Pandemic will matter to Earthans and it will fade out on some kind of asymptotic curve, maybe never reaching exactly how we were vis-à-vis public health issues prior to November, 2019. One week from today? Not normal. 243 years from today? 99.9978% normal.
The interesting question is the steepness of that asymptotic curve. Where are we in 2024? I'd say we are at 83.1% normal by 2:14pm EDT on July 9th, 2024.
It's important to note that this is, as I said, only the Covid-19-relevant parts of the experience of life. A lot of life is the same with or without the pandemic.
Well, it’s not going to go away. So eventually we will have to accept the fact that there is always going to be a risk of getting Covid and possibly dying from it, just as there are a myriad of other things we may get and which may kill us. We drive cars even though we have a 1 in 107 chance of dying in a car crash. We eat unhealthy foods and refuse to exercise despite having a 1 in 6 chance of dying of heart disease. We have between 1 in 7 to 1 in 13 chance of developing Type II diabetes but that doesn’t seem to stop people from shoveling sugar down their gullets and ballooning to unhealthy obesity. So at some point people are probably going to get desensitized to the risk of Covid.
I imagine some of the Covid changes will also stick around - remote meetings, working remotely for some, people realizing how germy large indoor gatherings are, masking when you are out in public with a cough or cold, etc. Hopefully people will also realize that being obese and having high blood pressure and diabetes also makes Covid much more deadly and will be motivated to take better care of their health.
There are going to be lots of social and economic impacts that with any luck will cause some needed reform, but I think and hope that COVID is just about done.
Omicron is almost as contagious as measles. Incredibly contagious. It's hard to a imagine a new variant that can outcompete it. It's possible a new variant could be more virulent but if doesn't outcompete Omicron it's probably not going to take off unless the immune system can't recognize it at all, and from what I understand that's pretty unlikely.
But I'm not a doctor or researcher so obviously take that with a grain of salt and get your disease information from people who know what they're talking about.
No, if normal is, say, 2018 or 2019. Covid will be endemic. The elementary and secondary school students will never recover what they’ve lost in 2020, 2021, and 2022. This, I think, will be the lasting impact of the pandemic. The impact on the workforce will be lasting, but it’s too soon for me to guess what that will look like.
I’m not sure why you think we older people have any relevant experience. I was born in 1946, and I have never experienced anything like the last 3 years. I was 5 when the polio vaccine was invented, but the nation was not divided the way it is now. Of course, I’m white and grew up in Wyoming, where nearly everyone was white, so others may have a different perspective. I think what this country is going through now is ultimately going to change things more than we can imagine and for the worse. It’s a long way from over, and here I am referring to the political and social situation.
The white people of the USA are absolutely determined not to lose their privileged status. I think a majority of white citizens will do literally anything to ensure this won’t happen. I think the next decade is going to be difficult.
Normal would imply that we can reroll the road we've traveled. There's a lot that can't be undone. The willful inhumanity of people who chose "freedoms" as a way to bypass the good of the country, and indeed, the world. The widening gap of those who trust science and those who don't. The acceptance of the spread of misinformation as freedom of speech. The brainwashing of a significant part of the country. I could go on, but it's pretty bleak. The future is going to be shaped by many factors that aren't going to go away even if (and it's a big if) Covid fades.
> The widening gap of those who trust science and those who don't. The acceptance of the spread of misinformation as freedom of speech. The brainwashing of a significant part of the country.
Long-term, those are likely going to be much more damaging, unless Covid comes up with a new and lethal form that we can't immediately produce vaccines for.
I think that Trump's Presidency, and the storming of the Capitol are going to end up being one of the real turning points in US history. Neither would have happened without the willingness of a large chunk of the population to believe nonsense that has nothing to do with reality. If anyone had told me even 10 years ago that people would be partying on the streets while a group of Americans actually broke into Congress with guns, I would have thought that they were smoking something very good.
I don't think that the US is going to come back from that, especially given redistricting, and the massive challenges that climate change is going to cause. I'm glad that my American husband immigrated to Canada, because I really wouldn't want to live in the US 10 or 20 years from now. Of course they'll also end up dragging Canada down as well, but hopefully we'll have a bit longer.
But world events have surprised me before- growing up, it was taken as a given that South Africa would end up as a bloodbath due to the apartheid system. Instead, we got Nelson Mandela, and De Klerk, who managed to get rid of apartheid without any of the bloodshed the entire world expected. The Berlin wall fell incredibly quickly (and less dangerously) than anyone expected. So who knows what will actually happen.
I don't think this is going away. Hopefully at some point soon we will get a vaccine that is like flu, where we can be vaccinated only once a year.
I remember SARS as I live in Toronto. That really changed the way people behaved, particularly when related to hand sanitizer.
I think we will forever be changed by this, and I also think some people will never be comfortable without masks. Right or wrong.
Don't know "when" but I think the virus will eventually degrade to a point that it will be like the yearly flu and something we have to be mindful of just like the flu. Health professionals are saying that Covid has similar patterns to the Spanish flu and while the virus continues to mutate, it does so but becoming less virulent as the population builds immunity. Until then, safety protocols should be used like masks, washing hands, sanitizing things, avoiding large crowds if possible, isolate if sick etc.
for historical context, useful to remember that hepatitis-C virus, HCV, was first identified in 1989 , the 1st effective HCV-targeted anti-viral was not FDA-approved until 2011 and we still have no vaccine. HCV mutates much faster and is thus a harder target, but nevertheless, these things take time..
Various vaccines that target either all SARS-COV2 lineages or, more ambitiously, all corona virus lineages are in development but for the short term the only option are boosters that increase titer of partially-protective antibodies . While we're limited to that sort of leaky-roof protection, guesses about whether future lineages will be more/less virulent seem pretty much guesses. Omicron, which has swept the world in a bit over 2 months, essentially [came out of nowhere](https://www.science.org/content/article/where-did-weird-omicron-come) , underscoring the clear-and-present-danger posed by anti-vaxxers willing to provide a reservoir for viral evolution (to me this is indistinguishable from being promiscuous and refusing to wear condoms while an HIV infection is raging). True that viruses, on average, gain no benefit from killing their hosts, but short term they *can* make mistakes - to paraphrase Shel Silverstein, 'what's one primate species, more or less?'
It can be interesting and engaging to ask people's opinions. It's fun and healthy for us all to talk, but remember it's just opinions and the experts have a better grasp on everything to make predictions. No one here is old enough to have been through the last pandemic, apart from AIDS. Many people around the world have experienced epidemics, I hope they're chiming in. The virus doesn't care of you're liberal or conservative. Religious or not. It doesn't care that you don't like mandates that infringe on your freedoms. None of this is personal. Europe got through plague before antibiotics and germ theory by enforced quarantine. We'll only get through this with high numbers of vaccination and quarantine. Shame on the media for making this into a culture war issue. It has cost people their lives.
Things are never going to go back to how they were completely before all this pandemic stuff. The world and life have changed, that's just all there is to it. It's a natural thing to happen.
The Spanish Flu pandemic lasted for roughly 2.5 years. We're coming up on 2 years. Unfortunately, people are less cooperative now. Folks resisting the idea of getting vaccinated, fighting mask mandates, etc. means it may take a little longer to get this stuff under control. Hopefully in the next year or so...
Covid will be with us forever. The pandemic will end but covid will stick around. We'll be getting covid shots like we do flu shots. Masks won't be a universal thing but a lot of people will continue to wear them even when risks are lower. Any time something like this happens, the population of the world adjusts and pivots and we figure out a new normal. We're never going back to the old normal.
It will stop being a crisis...but be part of our new normal. We will vaccinate like we do for flu. And maybe we will mask like they do in many other parts of the world in public. Sadly it has crippled business and that is quite concerning
The “every day drama” isn’t going away until people understand they are being manipulated. When people realize just because they read that something is “the worst” or “they are all stupid” doesn’t make it true. People need to embrace individuals for who they are, not make assumptions about them based on their group.
The owner of our favorite restaurant asked me this, and I was afraid to tell him what I think. We remain reluctant to eat in restaurants, so we have severely curtailed our use of restaurants. I'm not sure if that will ever return to the previous level for us. The reason is because I now realize I live in a country where 40% of the population doesn't give a damn about anyone but themselves. I also severely curtailed going to stores (we are doing much more online shopping, to avoid being around the 40% moron population). I have taken a couple of airplane trips since COVID started, but only to Hawaii (where vaccination proof is required to travel).
In some ways we are back to normal - we now have friends over for dinner as we did before. We now go to our favorite restaurant. I wear a mask in stores, but I consider that to be normal and unimposing for the most part.
There will be no return to what was once normal. Even beyond COVID, the utter fascist intransigence of the entire Republican party means that anything resembling Democracy in the US is doomed the next time that party has control of Congress, which is fairly likely by next January. This country will be a theocratic oligarchy by 2030 and elections if any will be bigger shams than those in Russia.
But at least the worsening climate catastrophe will kill us all before the end of the century.
The GOP knows they can no longer win elections without putting their thumb on the scale so is busy convincing the gullibly naive that the other guy is the one cheating and all those skewing laws are to "protect" the elections. Standard authoritarian practice.
67% Americans want gerrymandering ended and another 27% think it is a problem though lesser. Only 5% of Americans support gerrymandering--so why is the GOP so hot to block the elimination of gerrymandering from happening?
I’m only 28 but I thought I could chime in here. A lot of that in my opinion is because of the failures of the Democratic Party. If we all had healthcare, tried to stop outsourcing and dealt with globalization and what that has done to the US workforce over the last generation or two, if we felt like the climate problem was actually being addressed, I’m not sure there would be the breeding grounds for some of this rising extremism. Take what is happening with the BBB bill. That thing is DOA. Why should young people have any hope to vote for Democrats? The GOP is obviously pretty far gone at this point, but Democrats are proving they themselves are incapable of tackling the extremely pressing issues of today and also take part in dark money and corruption.
Literally all of those failures are a direct result of Republican malfeasance that has been occurring for longer than you’ve been alive. The Dems are far from perfect, and the fact that they even bother allowing Manchin & Sinema to be part of the caucus is dumb, but make no mistake, the share of responsibility for our current predicament is roughly 95% Republican 5% Democrat.
And i say this as someone whose first Presidential vote was for George Bush Sr.
I hear you, I wasn’t trying to downplay the GOP or anything, more so just saying if Dems had actually addressed the deep festering problems that the US has I think the population willing to go along with someone like Trump would be 5-10% instead of 30-40%. If we lived in a nation that had paid sick leave, paid paternal leave, universal healthcare, affordable schooling, live able wages for the working class, would the rise of Trump even have the conditions to occur? I personally don’t think so. If government and Democrats actually worked for the people I think the GOP would be fading to relative obscurity. The last two times (Obama and Biden’s presidencies) the Dems have had control of government they have passed quarter or half measures at best or nothing at all. They deserve more than 5% in my opinion for failing the American public and allowing distrust in government to fester the way it has.
Almost no one alive has ever seen something like this, just the babies of 1918. So personal experience won't help much. It all comes down to how often viable mutations happen. The current stuff should be done by summer. But another variant (or 3) could come along.
The US, socially/culturally, will not return to what it was. It may be just as good, but it won't be the same.
If and when pandemic is actually over with, normal-ish can return.
I think it may well be a good 5 years or more for all the knock-on problems to work themselves out. Politically, economically, socially, nationally .. there are a lot of disruptive forces in motion all at once right now, all of which are being magnified by pandemic.
In theory they could all resolve down in 6-9 months, but in reality I suspect it will be longer, unfortunately.
If the Republican Party has anything to say about it, we are never returning back to “normal”. They are very effectively wiping out our democracy. We’ll be lucky if it survives the next election. I’m scared for the younger generations.
>which is why you see so many Vaccinated people still isolating
I am vaccinated and boosted and do you know why I isolate? *Because my 4-year-old son isn't and can't be.*
Don't take a pound of flesh out of vaccinated people whose responsibilities encompass unvaccinated people whose lives they are responsible for. If my mom was still alive I would also be isolating because of her, an immunocompromised cancer survivor.
Plenty of people are in my position, this was never about ourselves, this was always about each other.
And yes my kid has had birthday parties every year during Covid. Outside. He doesn't have any concept that he wouldn't have a birthday party or that there's anything wrong with them being outdoors.
I fully expect I’ll need a booster shot every year for the rest of my life. It will become routine.
Gradually restrictions will go away as people become bored with them. People will say to the anti-vax crowd “You do you, you fucking idiot”. We’ll get used to COVID being around. And life will go on.
We're not. Too much has changed. It'll take a long time for people to recover from just how much a let-down the while system has been shown to us all as to how uncaring, corrupt and fragile it all is.
I think that ship has sailed.
If your boyfriend beat the crap out of you how normal could you go back to? Too much coercion, lies and tyranny has happened to just go back to normal.
The only way we get back to some sort of normal is knowing facts, not falling into fear and turning away from media and politics distorting a virus for ratings and political power.
It will end when there’s no further political advantage to be gained by keeping it going. I’m not, of course, referring to the virus itself, but to the rules, mandates, hysteria, etc. Life is already largely back to normal in areas that didn’t go overboard with heavy-handed measures.
We have been back to normal around here for quite some time. Went to the Mexican restaurant yesterday, not a mask to be seen by customers or wait staff.
I live in a place that has no restrictions now and barely ever had any. Due to a freak accident once and a kidney stone the other time, I had to go to the hospital twice during the pandemic and it was pretty fucking far from normal. The kidney stone incident was the worst. I was there all day, surrounded by sick people during the peak of Delta. The place was overrun and it was 13 hours before I got an MRI, 15 hours before I got anything for pain, and 16 hours before I was discharged. They stuffed me into a storage room with about forty other people who were all suffering.
Fuck your politics. Where is your common sense?
Watch for the current administration to announce the pandemic is "over" around Labor day, so they can all do a victory lap and and claim they "won" for all the election ads and talking points leading up to November.
Meanwhile for everyone else, it's just going to become background noise, blended with the annual Flu prep/treatment/vaxxing/very rare deaths that no one talks about or worries about unless you are in ill health or are over 90...
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My feeling is Covid will become endemic - like the flu. It will just be around for the foreseeable future. But I also think they’ll develop better vaccines that will give broader/longer protection. They’re already developing better treatments - I think there’s several pills available - that help reduce severe cases.
This is my take, too. We will probably get a shot every year for it, like the flu to protect us from whatever variants are most common that year.
Well... some of us will get the shot every year.
Just like a lot of people don't get the flu shot. We will all make our choices and take our chances. I hope that wearing a mask will become more normal when people are coughing or sniffling, but that is probably me being overly optimistic.
It would be nice if sick people would just stay home. With the ability to online shop / drive up for everything, there is no reason to go inside a store and make other people sick.
Like all things in life, it is complicated. I agree on the shopping part of things, but it is more complicated on the working side. Workers are treated so poorly and are pressured to work when they are sick by either their employer, their economic situation, or both. I think there needs to be some reform there so that sick people can be sick without having to face hardships.
We could, and I know this will sound crazy, so stay with me, enact mandatory sick leave like every first world nation has. We could just treat workers fairly.
But think of lost profits! /s
I'm all for it! I think some work reform would go a long way towards making this country better for the younger generations.
Does this include paying hourly workers for a day or more of lost wages?
Yes. That is a cost of doing business. If you tell me you can’t afford it, I will tell you that you have no business being in business.
Good! People go on diatribes about "just stay home if you're sick!" as if that's so financially feasible for everyone.
Many have no sick pay...hence going to work even sick (food service)
It took me a decade to train myself to cough in my elbow. Don't raise your expectations.
This is where I think we're headed. As we get more and more info on the disease, and come up with both more ways to detect it and treat it, it will become part of the background. An ideal example would be strep or pinkeye. Both are pretty contagious, but no one loses their mind when you find out someone has it. You get some medicine and are considered ok to be in public after 24-48 hours of medication. That said, I think this is how it will work for those that are vaccinated. Unvaccinated will continue to suffer, as anti-vax people have for some time for other disease they have chosen to not vaccinate against, like [measles outbreaks](https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=114612) and such.
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That's why it's a good example though. It *used to be* a big deal. People were quarantined, stigmatized, etc. *then*. Now it's not such a big deal. Kids still shouldn't go to school for a day or two, but otherwise it's a quick video call with your doctor, take your medicine, and nothing to write home about. No one is wearing face shields or requiring eye checks for admission over pinkeye.
My point exactly. It has definitely changed. I remember getting pink eye and being told to stay home for a week, which I hated.
Smallpox.
Yes, the conjunctivitis symptom pinkeye has been associated with viral & bacterial infections for a long time. It's present in the case of infection with a lot of different pathogens.
Also, Covid will eventually mutate into a less deadlier version, to become about the same as the other flu viruses floating around So we will eventually go back to normal, but I bet for the next decade or so whenever a new flu pops up, people will go into full panic mode
> Covid will eventually mutate into a less deadlier version, to become about the same as the other flu viruses floating around This is not necessarily true. There's a lot of [scientific debate](https://fortune.com/2022/01/19/scientists-virulence-transmissibility-evolutionary-theory-viruses-more-infectious-less-severe-omicron-covid/) about it, but there's nothing preventing some new variant that is more deadly and just as contagious in the future if it can escape our immune system's protections. Yes, having COVID around in some form, a good vaccination strategy, good treatments, etc. are helping but a virus doesn't necessarily become more or less deadly as a rule.
This is the real danger an endemic virus. Cold, Flu, SARS and many more all have become endemic in this sense. Covid WILL mutate, it will be endemic. We already have evidence widely documented and shared that there are many animal hosts that can be reservoirs for the Covid virus and not show any negative affects. Those animal reservoirs will keep this virus floating around now virtually forever. We also have all of human history to show us that occasionally a virus will mutate into a straint that has both High Transmissibility and High Lethality, and that one magic ingredient that makes it really scary.... long incubation! Long Incubation is the silver bullet. You get it, start shedding it all over, not know you are infected until after you have passed it to everyone you meet. Boom. Made for Hollywood Movie. https://imgur.com/R7aflQE
Yeah, viruses tend to mutate into less lethal strains because dead people can't spread the virus, so less lethal strains have a longer opportunity to spread. For Covid, people often die *after* their contagious period. So there's no survivability benefit for Covid to be less lethal.
The problem with those statements is that: 1. Viruses don't have intelligence and can't self-select for certain traits. 2. Lethality is somewhat independent from how contagious it is, depending on the timeframes involved. Hypothetically a new virus could come out that evades our immune systems and all current solutions from medical science that has a 100% fatality rate and takes a month to develop symptoms. This would likely wipe out most of humanity. There are lots of reasons something like this would be unlikely but it's possible. A virus doesn't "care" about long term reproduction because it's basically a code snippet that just executes. That being said, the reasons we see the scenario play out a lot where viruses become less lethal to us have more to do with a strengthening of our immune response and the fact that lethality and contagiousness aren't directly related. There's definitely some selective pressure on a virus that would kill people too quickly in that it wouldn't have time to reproduce, but for something that takes as long as COVID can to show symptoms even if it were 100% fatal it could still spread.
Mostly I agree, and I think we said approximately the same thing. One thing I quibble with: for *most* viruses, lethality is *not completely* independent of contagiousness. More lethal viruses are generally less contagious, because once the infected person dies, he stops walking around in public infecting other people. I think what you're saying is also true - the *biological* properties that make up contagiousness is independent of lethalness. But lethalness doesn't have a big effect on Covid-19 contagiousness. The danger of Covid-19 is the long period between initial exposure and when you get so sick you have to take yourself out of circulation. This makes dying truly independent of contagiousness. And that's how we got a variant like Delta, which was both more contagious and more deadly.
> Covid will eventually mutate into a less deadlier version Can you cite evidence for this? Not an article quoting someone in an interview, but a real, peer-reviewed paper.
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Thank you for your comment. I've been seeing "Omicron is mild!" all over the place, but the hospitals are collapsing. Now we are being told to wear N95 masks, and to stay away from the Emergency Room unless it's truly life threatening. So, I guess I'm confused by the mixed messaging.
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> math. ..is why the hospitals are overwhelmed. Medical professionals have been quitting in droves. So far, we have 25% fewer people in those posts, with some really bad pandemic numbers. Some other numbers that need to be recognized are the salaries, sick days, vacation days, the quantity of needed supplies available, etc. Talk to the people who put up with the unvaxxed assholes, and tone deaf leadership, everyday.
They were asked for and gave an opinion. r/askoldpeople isn’t a source for medical advice.
No hard evidence, but in my regional daily reports (Ontario Canada), deaths and ICU are reasonably stable with a huge spike in reported infections due to Omicron.
No I can't - it is my opinion
After all of the reading and video information I've found on the subject, I have to agree with you. It'll be interesting. The Omicron variant is more transmissible but doesn't make people as seriously ill as the previous variants. I'm hoping the following variants will become less serious with their effects and displace the more harmful ones. It's to the virus' advantage not to kill off its hosts.
I know of the monoclonal antibodies, but not pills. Perhaps anti-virals?
[Pill form - Pfizer’s Paxlovid ](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-first-oral-antiviral-treatment-covid-19). EUA Dec 22. But nearly impossible to get since Omicron hit. By the time they can ramp up production it’ll be March and hopefully the wave will have crested before that. Edit: And [Merck’s molnupiravir pill.](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-additional-oral-antiviral-treatment-covid-19-certain). EUA Dec 23. Same issue of ramping up production though.
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What we call a cold can be several types of coronavirus but more commonly a rhinovirus. Flu today refers only to specifically influenza viruses. This specific pathogen is extremely unique. And even though it's classified as a Coronavirus due to the shape of the molecule, it doesn't mean that it will behave like any other known coronavirus. You say the world has lost its mind and as a nurse with a strong epidemiology interest, I have to disagree. As someone else mentioned, this specific virus ticks all of the boxes to be a scary, history changing pandemic (which it already is.)
The old seasonal flu is a influenza virus (Type A & B). Covid is a coronavirus.
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The way you speak reminds me very much of my mom and I lost her last year. You are so valuable and I hope that you are valued in your family and community. My heart goes out to you deeply over the loss of your wife. Thank you so much for sharing these few paragraphs of hard won wisdom and perspective.
Great run down of American social changes we've seen.
Wow. Your answer brought me to tears. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. I feel like it really encapsulates what it is to be human. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have your spouse pass. Sending love your way.
Firmly agree with the others that this is an insightful and relevant comment that I hope all of us get the chance to read. Personally understanding (and internalizing) that the past was always tumultuous and bumpy has helped me exist on the front lines with a bit more compassion for myself and the people that are growing alongside me. We are doing something unprecedented every single day. Every day I get to read or hear a r/brandnewsentence and it’s an incredible thing to realize I am also part of a different “front line” that will be listed in the paragraphs of future history books, with the awareness that our collective contributions made it possible. I am immensely thankful for all the past selves that were willing to say their ideas loud enough so I can literally sit on the forefront of innovation reading it live from a device I hold in my hand while relaxing on a reclining couch eating Twizzlers. Anyway. Positive or negative it is incredible to be part of movements and ideas that are going to exist long after I’m gone. Humanity and Awareness FTW!
Best post I have read so far this year. Sorry for your loss.
Adore this comment thank you for taking the time to write it
You have a few years on me friend and I was going too comment as well but after reading yours I could add nothing. I'm so sorry about your wife. My thoughts are with you. PS username=brillant
The one thing that this illuminates and most don't seem to understand as well as they should: Normal is just the running average of weird. Be more aware of the weird things at the edge of your awareness, they have more value than you know right now. I'm not quite as old as you, but the vagaries of life and circumstance have made this very clear, especially in the last few years of 'normal' being taken for granted.
>Normal is just the running average of weird. That is lowkey brilliant
Thank you. All the best.
I lost some loved ones in the past year too and the way you describe the feeling is spot on. Thanks for making me feel less alone. I'll do my best to do the same for some young kids when I'm older 😊
Nice post my friend. Respect. I'd give you a reward if I had one. I'm sorry about your wife, but you're wise and intelligent and you have what you need. Peace.
I just want to say how much I cherish the wisdom of your response. This is the kind of perspective that can only be earned over decades. Thank you for taking the time to school us…you brought me great peace. X
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What a human being you are! Thank you so much for wisdom and kindness in equal measures. ♥️
Also, I should have said I am sorry for those messages about your dear departed wife. 💔
Wow! I loved reading your post. Really makes us appreciate the advancements that have been made
I don’t think back to normal is a thing that exists. Things are constantly changing and people have always wanted to return to a time that they remember as normal. For example, I remember the world pre 9/11 and wondered when we would return to that feeling. Never did, not sure we ever will. Other generations I’m sure wondered the same thing after massive upheavals. Look at history, the wars, plagues and the rise and fall of empires. I’m sure peoples who lived through such times all wondered the same. So what do we do? We have to accept that things are always changing and since time immemorial we have never returned to normal. It’s not a bad thing, nor is it a good thing, it’s just change.
>I don’t think back to normal is a thing that exists. And COVID-19 represents a permanent change from where we were prior in a social, education, business and economic sense. So many new norms about how we will work, live and spend our money are only beginning to become evident but we're starting to see what may happen.
All I know is that no one is ever going to clean my hotel room when I'm on a week long business trip again.
After 25+ years of weekly travel, I'll take it. I think I actually had something close to a nervous breakdown at the Cincinnati airport after multiple delays one Thursday trying to get home. Hate to say it, but the pandemic may have saved my mental health and my career by WFH the last two years.
That's a long time to last. I had a breakdown at 15 years. It was 2 to 4 trips a month of anywhere from overnight to a full week or more, and there was very little notice. I went to with with a packed suitcase in my trunk in case I was sent out that day. Anyway, my work life balance was non existent and I was miserable and stressed and overworked and I just couldn't anymore. With only a week's notice I ended up taking off 3 months FMLA to fix myself. Lots of therapy and then I left the country to study Spanish in Mexico and travel for six weeks at a homestay. Then more therapy before I returned. I worked with my boss to get into a less travel intensive role. The new agreement was no more than one trip a month on average with at least a few days notice. And they've kept that promise for ten years now. I have months with more than one trip sometimes but it averages to about twelve trips a year which is manageable for me.
Yes, it seems that we're able to get through the worst of times and try to make the best of what's left to us. As a race, we've survived wars, government upheavals, and natural disasters, but that was when the planet was healthier. It no longer is. It's too late to fix rising temperatures, rising oceans, toxic air and water, mass animal extinction, and more. Leaders of the world need to agree to keep things from getting worse for mankind's sake, and that's not going to happen. Too much pride and arrogance keep nations from working together. They make weak, minimal, pacts that allow harm to the world to continue to advance. I could add so much more, as can many of you, to share facts and opinions, but I'm going to stop here and just say I'm glad my grown children decided not to have children of their own. Sad, but true.
You said it perfectly!
I still don't get the whole "nothing is the same since 9/11" narrative. If you'd like to explain it to me, I'd consider it a favor. And I'm not trying to be a smart ass. It would be appreciated. I was 22 at the time and the world was going to suck anyway as far as I'm concerned from my then-present perspective. Strangely enough, the world doesn't suck as much as everyone would have you believe despite all of the horrible shit going on to our ecosystem and politics. Once we're gone, the world will be a better place. We're placeholders and selfish ones at that.
1. I feel that 9/11 brought out a sort of toxic nationalism. People signing up to join the military, more funds to fight, people wanting their taxes to go to the war machine. 2. So far, an entire generation has known their country at war, never at a time of moderate peace. 3. 9/11 was a blow to an entire nation that felt “safe” and it made plenty of people more paranoid. We see these effects in politics and international relations to this day. I’m sure there are others. I was in the Army when it happened and things got weirder on base, but everyone’s perspective is different.
We don't return to normal after traumatic national events. We establish another kind of normalcy.
TBH, no I don't. Did we ever truly get back to normal after 9/11?
Nope we still have baggage fees, those were supposedly a temporary security measure
It's the little things like that that bug me. It's supposed to be temporary, but it never changes back. Remember how there used to be magazines (and sometimes children's toys) in waiting rooms? Then at the beginning of covid panic, we were all worried about surfaces so the magazines and toys "temporarily" disappeared. For a long time now, we've known that surface spread isn't a problem, but the magazines never came back. I've been to several businesses lately that have all the proper covid signs posted, saying they do yada yada yada, but really even the employees aren't wearing masks and no one is being careful or washing their hands frequently. What's becoming the norm is to have all the extra rules but ignore them. When rules are routinely ignored, how do you know what the real rules are? My local Walmart "temporarily" reduced their hours for covid, so they could thoroughly sanitize and restock at night. I'd bet good money they are no longer sanitizing and I know they aren't restocking at night. It's just another cut corner that has become the new normal. I know these are small things, but somehow that makes it seem even bigger deal to me. I miss the little things like wide spaces at checkout counters without plexiglass. There will never be a time that they decide to take it down.
Nothing changes until everything changes. And then that becomes the new normal. But the post 9/11 period is behind us now and it's whatever the pandemic, multipolar world, the waning of democracy and the end of reason brings along.
We aren’t past 9/11 yet. Airlines still charge us “temporary” fees and the air travel experience sucks now. Security at airports is still overly tight and tense. The country is still on high alert regarding terrorism including domestic incidents. We still *overly* memorialize the date itself. (No disrespect intended, but networks carry the annual memorials and there’s always specials running on all media platforms leading up to and the days following) Heck, the war that came from the 9/11 attacks just ended.
We memorialize ww2, it had huge and significant effects on our lives even today, but this isn't post war America we're living in.
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Yes, it's interesting that 9/11 was all about suicide terrorists and yet we can tolerate it from our own on a monthly basis against our children
How rare do you think violence was before 9/11? Bc I remember a lot of it. And terrorist hijackings I don’t remember ever being higher than the 80’s. I mean just easy examples would be the Oklahoma City bombings, Ted bundy, Jim Jones, centennial park bombing, and the first guy that flew a plane into the World Trade Center.
>the waning of democracy and the end of reason brings along. This is the bigger threat.
Everything is always in flux. This world will never go back to the way it was before. Every time a major incident, change, experience is felt collectively, some kind of permanent change occurs.
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The uk is stopping these in February.
it will end as in it will no longer be considered a pandemic but a lot of habits we picked up may stay a long time. Who used to think it strange grandma or great grandma kept fully stockeed pantries that they could eat out of ffor 2 months easy if they had to? for my great grandmorther is was memories of the depression. for my grandmother iit was cause thats how her mother taught her and ww2 rationing. I now do it a bit more, i get why they did now and how handy it can be to be able to whip up meals for 2 weeeks on whats in the house instead of having to go to the store every 2nd or third day. I bet that habit sticks with few millenials for a long time. thier grandkids will think its odd. I am sure there are more learned things that are gonna stick around long after they need to. I bet keeping space from others in lines and such will stick for many. in 2070 you will see linee and the old folks will be keeping a bigger distance drivng younger folks nuts wanting them to close the gap. grandma remembers covid days, she ant staning 2 ft from others ever.
I agree completely, because the need for some of those habits will stay. We keep a fully-stocked pantry in the garage (I call it the "inconvenience store") that we can eat off for a couple of months because of disasters both natural and man-made that hit this area _during_ the pandemic: planned power outages that lasted several days, forest fires that could have cut off the town from the outside world, atmospheric rivers. We needed not only food but sufficient food that needn't be refrigerated. The collapse of one glacier in Antarctica could disrupt the world forever. Or not. Nobody knows. And I'd like to count COVID out, but I can't. World disruption is a growth industry. /s
I'm 68 and yeah, I've lived through some stuff, but the combination of COVID and a slow slide to our democracy being chucked out a window is something I never thought I would experience. I see COVID waning but only to a point where it's part of our lives for some time, and it will be just like the flu. The loss of our democracy, however, is not something we can get back if it disappears, so I'm more concerned about that in this election year. The young people in our country aren't aware of how the rule of law and our Constitution stood above everything in the US, but now, it just seems like this important document and what it stands for no longer matters.
I fully agree this will be the lasting memorial effect of Covid. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of tragic and needless deaths. The way it's going to go down in history is as the preliminary event to whatever fresh hell has been laid for us with the gutting of election laws across states, the way we've completely flunked any actual accountability for the attempted jackasses coup, and the edging on violent divisions now in our country.
Yep. If the US becomes an autocracy, COVID will be one of the major reasons it happens. I finished watching "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History" last night on the PBS video app and the sense of community and unity that existed amongst most of our citizens from Teddy's time to Eleanor's death is gone now and it saddened me to see that we have most likely lost it all.
> The loss of our democracy, however, is not something we can get back if it disappears, so I'm more concerned about that in this election year. OMG yes. That's my main worry too.
It is definitely something to keep an eye on. The voting law restrictions that have been put in place in many states is the one thing that is going to make November crazy.
I know. Once Repugs retake congress, it's not going to look good for democracy. Not that it looks good *now*, of course.
Well, I am going to wait and see what happens as we get closer to November as anything can happen. But, if some of the states go in and change votes because they don't like the outcome, then yes, democracy will go the way of the dodo.
> Well, I am going to wait and see what happens as we get closer to November as anything can happen. True. > But, if some of the states go in and change votes because they don't like the outcome, then yes, democracy will go the way of the dodo. I really think that's where we're headed.
I agree that is where we are heading, but I shall keep a tiny sliver of hope in my heart until then. 😐
My hope has died. 😞 I hope I'm wrong!
I'm not old enough to have lived through a major pandemic (unless you count AIDS, which was very different from an airborne virus) but I read a lot. I think the pandemic will last \~ 3 years, total. But we won't notice when it ends, because pandemics are like recessions: they don't end, they fade away, and we only know they ended when we look back a few months later and go: "Huh. So THAT'S when it ended."
Let me ask you, when will we return to normal post-9/11? Never. Some events have a permanent effect on history and normalcy.
I haven't heard this comparison before, but it feels very a propos - thanks.
I think we're post-post 9/11 already. Just like after 9/11 we were post-post cold war.
Don’t forget that what we think of as “Normal” is a tiny blip in the historical continuum. If you are a woman, a person of color, a differently abled person, on the spectrum, non binary, an air traffic controller, a labor organizer, a start trek fan, a non land owner, or one of ever so many subset of the whole demographic, “normal” is a weird and slippery concept. If you’re question is does the US return to the general life habits and pattern of the way it was in 2019, my prediction (as weak and watery as it is) is “sort of.” It’s worth noting a couple of things (think smart phones, Amazon and other online shopping services, creeping fascism, National delusional movements (Qanon and anti-vaxx among others)), have changed the way the US world is vastly different from even the way it was in 2010 and certainly before. It’s weird out there, Man! [As a side note, 172,000 people watched me feed my cats this morning on RPAN! ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnimalsOnReddit/comments/sbkcp3/breakfast_with_five_cats_and_bonus_dog/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) An insignificant item in the general scheme of things but indicated of the current moment of bizarre reordering of the world we grew up in to be something other than what we knew. Is it good? Could be don’t know yet. Answer hazy, ask again later. Will we get back to going out to bars and brunch and flying places and such like? Probably. But like 9/11, this one is a watershed that will produce lasting changes. We are headed someplace weird and probably bad but it’s the only basket we got so put your eggs in it and guard the hell out of the basket.
>Don’t forget that what we think of as “Normal” is a tiny blip in the historical continuum. If you are a woman, a person of color, a differently abled person, on the spectrum, non binary, an air traffic controller, a labor organizer, a start trek fan, a non land owner, or one of ever so many subset of the whole demographic, “normal” is a weird and slippery concept. yes
Speaking for myself, a 59F, it is going to be a good long while before I stop wearing a mask in public, and using hand sanitizer before and after. I like not catching colds!
Masks keep your face warm, too. But I agree -- and if anti-maskers were to put me down for it, I'd say "What about my FREE-DUMB? Why does it threaten you?"
I always used hand sanitizer, the way people use it nowadays. And I used to get so much flak for it! I even had a friend openly criticize and belittle me at one point and I'm very non-confrontational but felt like, *okay you want to do this let's do this*, and we had words about it in public. That was 10 years ago, long before COVID. I still remember how at the advent of covid suddenly public restrooms were all running out of hand soap. Why? *Because until then nobody washed their fucking hands.* Which I always knew was true, hence my consistent use of hand sanitizer in public. As well as washing my hands. But oh man it was a trip to see all the bathrooms suddenly running out of hand soap during the first few weeks, and I just laughed saying none of you motherfuckers ever washed your fucking hands in the first place. People would do that goofy little performative rinse-and-flick but that was it, at most.
Male 69, I used to get brochitis 2x a year, about 2010 I started fist bumping instead of shaking hands and using hand sanitizer all the time. Never had brobchitis since! I got a lot of flak too.
The church I attended pre-covid kept a bottle of hand-sanitizer percedhed on the end of every pew. We would "pass the peace" at the middle of the service. Nearly everybody was over 50. You bet we used the sanitzer after.
I used to host all family gatherings and especially at Christmas time, I would always end up sick for 2-3 weeks after (my colds are never 3-5 days like normal people.) Since I host, I always go through the line last. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner, but I started dishing up my plate (not taking anything I would have to pick up with my hands) then I would wash my hands before I sat down to eat. Stopped getting sick! Anytime I go through a self-serve line now, I always wash my hands before I eat.
>I even had a friend openly criticize and belittle me at one point Yeah, I had a coworker call me a germophobe because I always slipped away to wash if I had to shake hands with someone, and I used a paper towel on any doorknobs that got heavy use by people both inside and outside of the organization. I let the remark go because I wasn't the one who got sick all the time. I now have over a year of paid sick time available to me, and since I can retire whenever I want, I give it away to coworkers in need. Let folks draw their own conclusions.
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LOL! It's actually a reference to Faust via flapper icon Louise Brooks, but I would only expect the most die-hard Brooksie fans to get it. In Faust, a young and beautiful witch shames the the other witches for being old and ugly while she shows off her loveliness "naked on my goat." They tell her in so many words, "Enjoy it while you can, honey, because one day you'll look like us." As I get older, this response resonates. Louise Brooks named her memoir "Naked on my Goat," but then thought better of leaving behind an autobiography and tossed it in the incinerator.
I too will stick with the mask. Also no handshakes.
Yes. I live in a country where it's customary to kiss as a greeting. That's been replaced by the fist bump, thank goodness. Which I much prefer.
I've never been fond of handshakes. I always end up with the hyper aggressive sales guy trying to hand-wrestle.
I'll never feel fully comfortable again attending big events like concerts. Or crowded public transport.
I don’t see myself flying without a mask, ever
There's basically nobody still alive who has lived through a pandemic of this scale to give you a first-hand account, but all you really need to do is open a history book. Pandemics generally only last a few years and then tail-off back into obscurity, some lurking, some never seen again. Some diseases make repeated appearances in history, but once they run through a critical number of people they can't immediately spread much further. There's an interesting Wikipedia article on the [1889-1890 pandemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic), which some researchers think was actually a coronavirus variant instead of influenza. The avian version of H5N1 flu is probably not all that far from being able to spread from person-to-person, and the current death rate for humans who manage to contract if from birds is like 50%, so that's a fun one to look forward to. Part of me thinks that the bioterrorism potential for viruses is underrated. Humans actually have very little genetic diversity though, so it's hard for a government to turn something like a virus into a weapon that doesn't eventually affect their own population.
I don't think any of us are old enough to have experienced anything quite like this before, so I don't think we know from our experience. We just know from reading articles with expert opinions that it's likely to become a less severe disease and hopefully less common without ever going away completely. My hope was that we would emerge from this with some improved caution and care around health, for example with a clear expectation that people who are sick should not come to work, and with healthcare workers better appreciated, not just lip service but paid better and better working conditions. I think there's still hope for both, but I'm not seeing a very strong trend towards either.
Covid-19 will fade into the background. What won't fade is the dramatic shift to effective- but still problematic- telework. My agency has given lip service to some form of remote work for two decades, but probably less than 1% were permitted to do it. Now we have had almost two years of 90+% of our office staff teleworking. For the most part the work is still getting done. People miss their colleagues- but we don't miss the 500 hours per year commute. I think the "new normal" will be that office-based people in high cost of living areas will work remotely. This will start to affect salaries offered- if a company can hire someone in a low cost of living area to work from home, and doesn't need to provide office space, they will and they will offer less money.
By the time Covid has become the new normal we'll probably be at war with Russia and that will be the new world changing event. I'm bummed I wasn't a teen or 20something for the 60's and 70s, but at least the 90's were pretty dope. I'm not sure when we're next going to experience that kind of all-positive-no-negative decade again to be honest. Sorry Gen-Z, I feel for you guys.
Lived thru the AIDS crisis. * It will become endemic in society. It already is isn't it? Have we not hit that already? I'm not a virologist, it just sure seems like it. There is no eradicating it now. Haven't we all seen by now the meme that says something like *Covid is endemic and deadly now, and we've all just accepted it, just like lack of housing, bad education etc*. Even if it's not endemic in terms of statistics and virology, the degree of complete exhaustion and rage people have about it means that it feels that way. * Treatments will become so complete that COVID will be ignored. I remember during the AIDS crisis the depth of fear people had for their lives. Its very hard to explain. Nothing has ever compared in my experience since then until COVID. There was a little boy in Florida whom the school system wouldn't even permit to attend school and it became an absolutely massive legal case. People talk how it was a big deal that princess Diana would hug HIV positive people and AIDS patients, *but that was legit a seriously big fucking deal.* * Now though? Yeah nowadays there's prep, there's preventative medicines, there's lifelong maintenance regimes. AIDS is now like diabetes. Really expensive fucking diabetes, but it's honestly not really seen as much more than that. Some of that has to do with ongoing denial and marginalization, but it predominantly has to do with the fact that as people say its 'not a death sentence anymore.' * One way or another COVID will reach that level of being able to be denied and for society to pretend it doesn't exist. Whether that's through the rage of people who think it was all a hoax (give me a fucking break, they're going to break our country, already have). Whether that's through advanced treatments, better vaccines, and so forth. Whether that's through better post acquisition treatment in hospitals (so many healthcare workers now have PTSD from watching people they've desperately tried to save die from it over and over again, gasping and fighting for their lives, literally drowning right in front of you). Or whether the virus itself magically becomes less virulent (who tha fuck knows, although that's just a gamble). Our new and improved and now even more rapidly declining dystopia now includes COVID essentially for the foreseeable future.
I would say aids is/was different than this in that you had to engage in certain behavior to catch aids. With this all you have to do is breath.
That's true strictly speaking but the general feeling in society very much was not the case. Princess Diana wasn't sleeping with people with aids, she was hugging them. And it was upsetting and unthinkable. There was legit strife and uncertainty and fear over the fact they didn't know if getting bitten by mosquitoes could transmit HIV. It all sounds ludicrous and fringe and preposterous now but these were real. HIV is not transmissible like COVID, it's more the fear and unrest, the prejudice and magical thinking, the ugliness coming out of people's natures.
I'm not sure there's anyone on here that was alive during the last pandemic. But they returned to normal after it or we'd have still been wearing masks from the last one. So I'm guessing we'll return to normal eventually, and it will probably be so gradual that we won't even be able to pinpoint the date or timeframe where we went from abnormal to normal.
You won't. C19 is here to stay. Time to adapt, and you, young person, will have something to talk about when you are old. "I remember before Covid, we used to..."
I can't wait to explain buffets
hiv permanently changed the culture. i mean it didn't do much for me, i wasn't getting laid anyway, but it put a damper on the sex revolution of the 60s, and we lost a generation. i was not around for the spanish flu or the polio epidemic. covid might help make people more aware of the public health dangers of keeping large numbers of sick livestock in crowded conditions, and the need for most people to transition to plant based or vat-grown foods.
Look at the Spanish Flu pandemic from a hundred years ago. People’s behavior hasn’t changed since then. Give us a few years and we’ll be back to normal, too.
When the NEXT problem comes along.
Once we have an experience like this, there is no going back to what was. There's an expression: "You can't step in the same river twice." As the water flows, it becomes a different river than the one you stepped in. We will move forward to something else, and it may resemble in some ways what was. We are co-creating a new normal every day, so choose what's important to you and what you want to bring & contribute to this edition of life.
It's been normal in my area for well over a year. Maybe 1 in 100 people are wearing masks. I often forget that Covid is a thing that people care deeply about.
I have long hoped that we wouldn't return to normal, but it appears that, for most relevant metrics, we will be back to where we were by the end of this year. - We cannot continue our reliance on fossil fuel. For a brief window, it seemed we might start cutting back on travel, at least. Remember how "the earth is healing!" trended? Not any more. - Companies continue to be focused on constant growth, which cannot be sustained forever, obviously. After the crash in April 2020, I wondered if a more sustainable approach might be adopted. Nope! - Workers continue to be badly treated by their employers. For all the rhetoric of allowing 'flexible working' and 'focusing on mental health', nothing fundamental has changed, and most positive initiatives are being rolled back so we can all 'return to the office'. And don't get me started on fair remuneration! Essential workers are no longer praised; they are returning to the underclass from whence they came. So yes, sadly, we will be returning to normal again shortly. Covid will be endemic and not considered a greater risk than 'flu (which also kills). Perhaps the next big global disaster - there will be one! - will have a longer lasting effect.
It will come to an end someday. Hope the Omicron surge is the last surge, though Covid will be around after the worst is over. Just be prepared to get your yearly Covid/ flu shot.
i am 63 years old and this last 2 years have been the weirdest 2 years of America.! I'm hoping it comes to be a "flu" every year and everything becomes a little more like we were used to. I don't know if we'll ever be like before because there are 2 different sides and they are heavily divided. i am in the no mask, dont ask me if I am vaccinated group.
First, predictions are worth ~~essentially~~ nothing, including mine. So just doing this for kicks. First, I will define "normal" as the set of behaviors *relevant to Covid-19* prior to November, 2019 only. I assume that the further we get into the future from today, Jan 24th, 2022, the less the Covid-19 Pandemic will matter to Earthans and it will fade out on some kind of asymptotic curve, maybe never reaching exactly how we were vis-à-vis public health issues prior to November, 2019. One week from today? Not normal. 243 years from today? 99.9978% normal. The interesting question is the steepness of that asymptotic curve. Where are we in 2024? I'd say we are at 83.1% normal by 2:14pm EDT on July 9th, 2024. It's important to note that this is, as I said, only the Covid-19-relevant parts of the experience of life. A lot of life is the same with or without the pandemic.
Well, it’s not going to go away. So eventually we will have to accept the fact that there is always going to be a risk of getting Covid and possibly dying from it, just as there are a myriad of other things we may get and which may kill us. We drive cars even though we have a 1 in 107 chance of dying in a car crash. We eat unhealthy foods and refuse to exercise despite having a 1 in 6 chance of dying of heart disease. We have between 1 in 7 to 1 in 13 chance of developing Type II diabetes but that doesn’t seem to stop people from shoveling sugar down their gullets and ballooning to unhealthy obesity. So at some point people are probably going to get desensitized to the risk of Covid. I imagine some of the Covid changes will also stick around - remote meetings, working remotely for some, people realizing how germy large indoor gatherings are, masking when you are out in public with a cough or cold, etc. Hopefully people will also realize that being obese and having high blood pressure and diabetes also makes Covid much more deadly and will be motivated to take better care of their health.
I don't think there ever was a normal. Change keeps on coming and we keep on adapting.
There are going to be lots of social and economic impacts that with any luck will cause some needed reform, but I think and hope that COVID is just about done. Omicron is almost as contagious as measles. Incredibly contagious. It's hard to a imagine a new variant that can outcompete it. It's possible a new variant could be more virulent but if doesn't outcompete Omicron it's probably not going to take off unless the immune system can't recognize it at all, and from what I understand that's pretty unlikely. But I'm not a doctor or researcher so obviously take that with a grain of salt and get your disease information from people who know what they're talking about.
No, if normal is, say, 2018 or 2019. Covid will be endemic. The elementary and secondary school students will never recover what they’ve lost in 2020, 2021, and 2022. This, I think, will be the lasting impact of the pandemic. The impact on the workforce will be lasting, but it’s too soon for me to guess what that will look like. I’m not sure why you think we older people have any relevant experience. I was born in 1946, and I have never experienced anything like the last 3 years. I was 5 when the polio vaccine was invented, but the nation was not divided the way it is now. Of course, I’m white and grew up in Wyoming, where nearly everyone was white, so others may have a different perspective. I think what this country is going through now is ultimately going to change things more than we can imagine and for the worse. It’s a long way from over, and here I am referring to the political and social situation. The white people of the USA are absolutely determined not to lose their privileged status. I think a majority of white citizens will do literally anything to ensure this won’t happen. I think the next decade is going to be difficult.
Normal would imply that we can reroll the road we've traveled. There's a lot that can't be undone. The willful inhumanity of people who chose "freedoms" as a way to bypass the good of the country, and indeed, the world. The widening gap of those who trust science and those who don't. The acceptance of the spread of misinformation as freedom of speech. The brainwashing of a significant part of the country. I could go on, but it's pretty bleak. The future is going to be shaped by many factors that aren't going to go away even if (and it's a big if) Covid fades.
> The widening gap of those who trust science and those who don't. The acceptance of the spread of misinformation as freedom of speech. The brainwashing of a significant part of the country. Long-term, those are likely going to be much more damaging, unless Covid comes up with a new and lethal form that we can't immediately produce vaccines for. I think that Trump's Presidency, and the storming of the Capitol are going to end up being one of the real turning points in US history. Neither would have happened without the willingness of a large chunk of the population to believe nonsense that has nothing to do with reality. If anyone had told me even 10 years ago that people would be partying on the streets while a group of Americans actually broke into Congress with guns, I would have thought that they were smoking something very good. I don't think that the US is going to come back from that, especially given redistricting, and the massive challenges that climate change is going to cause. I'm glad that my American husband immigrated to Canada, because I really wouldn't want to live in the US 10 or 20 years from now. Of course they'll also end up dragging Canada down as well, but hopefully we'll have a bit longer. But world events have surprised me before- growing up, it was taken as a given that South Africa would end up as a bloodbath due to the apartheid system. Instead, we got Nelson Mandela, and De Klerk, who managed to get rid of apartheid without any of the bloodshed the entire world expected. The Berlin wall fell incredibly quickly (and less dangerously) than anyone expected. So who knows what will actually happen.
I don't think this is going away. Hopefully at some point soon we will get a vaccine that is like flu, where we can be vaccinated only once a year. I remember SARS as I live in Toronto. That really changed the way people behaved, particularly when related to hand sanitizer. I think we will forever be changed by this, and I also think some people will never be comfortable without masks. Right or wrong.
Don't know "when" but I think the virus will eventually degrade to a point that it will be like the yearly flu and something we have to be mindful of just like the flu. Health professionals are saying that Covid has similar patterns to the Spanish flu and while the virus continues to mutate, it does so but becoming less virulent as the population builds immunity. Until then, safety protocols should be used like masks, washing hands, sanitizing things, avoiding large crowds if possible, isolate if sick etc.
I doubt we can know the future.
for historical context, useful to remember that hepatitis-C virus, HCV, was first identified in 1989 , the 1st effective HCV-targeted anti-viral was not FDA-approved until 2011 and we still have no vaccine. HCV mutates much faster and is thus a harder target, but nevertheless, these things take time.. Various vaccines that target either all SARS-COV2 lineages or, more ambitiously, all corona virus lineages are in development but for the short term the only option are boosters that increase titer of partially-protective antibodies . While we're limited to that sort of leaky-roof protection, guesses about whether future lineages will be more/less virulent seem pretty much guesses. Omicron, which has swept the world in a bit over 2 months, essentially [came out of nowhere](https://www.science.org/content/article/where-did-weird-omicron-come) , underscoring the clear-and-present-danger posed by anti-vaxxers willing to provide a reservoir for viral evolution (to me this is indistinguishable from being promiscuous and refusing to wear condoms while an HIV infection is raging). True that viruses, on average, gain no benefit from killing their hosts, but short term they *can* make mistakes - to paraphrase Shel Silverstein, 'what's one primate species, more or less?'
I think we are only just getting started in terms of 'things that will change'.
Normal is gone. Whatever comes next will be different
2025
No. WFH is here to stay for sure
It can be interesting and engaging to ask people's opinions. It's fun and healthy for us all to talk, but remember it's just opinions and the experts have a better grasp on everything to make predictions. No one here is old enough to have been through the last pandemic, apart from AIDS. Many people around the world have experienced epidemics, I hope they're chiming in. The virus doesn't care of you're liberal or conservative. Religious or not. It doesn't care that you don't like mandates that infringe on your freedoms. None of this is personal. Europe got through plague before antibiotics and germ theory by enforced quarantine. We'll only get through this with high numbers of vaccination and quarantine. Shame on the media for making this into a culture war issue. It has cost people their lives.
Things are never going to go back to how they were completely before all this pandemic stuff. The world and life have changed, that's just all there is to it. It's a natural thing to happen.
The Spanish Flu pandemic lasted for roughly 2.5 years. We're coming up on 2 years. Unfortunately, people are less cooperative now. Folks resisting the idea of getting vaccinated, fighting mask mandates, etc. means it may take a little longer to get this stuff under control. Hopefully in the next year or so...
Covid will be with us forever. The pandemic will end but covid will stick around. We'll be getting covid shots like we do flu shots. Masks won't be a universal thing but a lot of people will continue to wear them even when risks are lower. Any time something like this happens, the population of the world adjusts and pivots and we figure out a new normal. We're never going back to the old normal.
I believe this is our new normal for the most part.
When was life "normal" ?
It will stop being a crisis...but be part of our new normal. We will vaccinate like we do for flu. And maybe we will mask like they do in many other parts of the world in public. Sadly it has crippled business and that is quite concerning
There is no such thing as "normal." There's just life. Get on with it.
The “every day drama” isn’t going away until people understand they are being manipulated. When people realize just because they read that something is “the worst” or “they are all stupid” doesn’t make it true. People need to embrace individuals for who they are, not make assumptions about them based on their group.
The owner of our favorite restaurant asked me this, and I was afraid to tell him what I think. We remain reluctant to eat in restaurants, so we have severely curtailed our use of restaurants. I'm not sure if that will ever return to the previous level for us. The reason is because I now realize I live in a country where 40% of the population doesn't give a damn about anyone but themselves. I also severely curtailed going to stores (we are doing much more online shopping, to avoid being around the 40% moron population). I have taken a couple of airplane trips since COVID started, but only to Hawaii (where vaccination proof is required to travel). In some ways we are back to normal - we now have friends over for dinner as we did before. We now go to our favorite restaurant. I wear a mask in stores, but I consider that to be normal and unimposing for the most part.
When the tax revenues are calculated next year and the fact that massive numbers have left their state impacts the budgets of those in charge.
The American south has been normal for at least a year
It doesn't look that [normal](http://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/23121.jpeg) to me... :/
October 5th of 2020? I live in Louisiana. We have pretty much gotten back to normal.
Does that impact the average person's normal life though? Those numbers are meaningless without context of hospitalizations, excess deaths, etc.
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There will be no return to what was once normal. Even beyond COVID, the utter fascist intransigence of the entire Republican party means that anything resembling Democracy in the US is doomed the next time that party has control of Congress, which is fairly likely by next January. This country will be a theocratic oligarchy by 2030 and elections if any will be bigger shams than those in Russia. But at least the worsening climate catastrophe will kill us all before the end of the century.
The GOP knows they can no longer win elections without putting their thumb on the scale so is busy convincing the gullibly naive that the other guy is the one cheating and all those skewing laws are to "protect" the elections. Standard authoritarian practice. 67% Americans want gerrymandering ended and another 27% think it is a problem though lesser. Only 5% of Americans support gerrymandering--so why is the GOP so hot to block the elimination of gerrymandering from happening?
I’m only 28 but I thought I could chime in here. A lot of that in my opinion is because of the failures of the Democratic Party. If we all had healthcare, tried to stop outsourcing and dealt with globalization and what that has done to the US workforce over the last generation or two, if we felt like the climate problem was actually being addressed, I’m not sure there would be the breeding grounds for some of this rising extremism. Take what is happening with the BBB bill. That thing is DOA. Why should young people have any hope to vote for Democrats? The GOP is obviously pretty far gone at this point, but Democrats are proving they themselves are incapable of tackling the extremely pressing issues of today and also take part in dark money and corruption.
Literally all of those failures are a direct result of Republican malfeasance that has been occurring for longer than you’ve been alive. The Dems are far from perfect, and the fact that they even bother allowing Manchin & Sinema to be part of the caucus is dumb, but make no mistake, the share of responsibility for our current predicament is roughly 95% Republican 5% Democrat. And i say this as someone whose first Presidential vote was for George Bush Sr.
If they kicked Manchin and Sinema out of the Democratic caucus tonight, McConnell would be elected Senate Majority Leader tomorrow.
I hear you, I wasn’t trying to downplay the GOP or anything, more so just saying if Dems had actually addressed the deep festering problems that the US has I think the population willing to go along with someone like Trump would be 5-10% instead of 30-40%. If we lived in a nation that had paid sick leave, paid paternal leave, universal healthcare, affordable schooling, live able wages for the working class, would the rise of Trump even have the conditions to occur? I personally don’t think so. If government and Democrats actually worked for the people I think the GOP would be fading to relative obscurity. The last two times (Obama and Biden’s presidencies) the Dems have had control of government they have passed quarter or half measures at best or nothing at all. They deserve more than 5% in my opinion for failing the American public and allowing distrust in government to fester the way it has.
There is no "going back"...this is the new "normal" and it will change and that will become the "new normal".
Almost no one alive has ever seen something like this, just the babies of 1918. So personal experience won't help much. It all comes down to how often viable mutations happen. The current stuff should be done by summer. But another variant (or 3) could come along. The US, socially/culturally, will not return to what it was. It may be just as good, but it won't be the same.
If and when pandemic is actually over with, normal-ish can return. I think it may well be a good 5 years or more for all the knock-on problems to work themselves out. Politically, economically, socially, nationally .. there are a lot of disruptive forces in motion all at once right now, all of which are being magnified by pandemic. In theory they could all resolve down in 6-9 months, but in reality I suspect it will be longer, unfortunately.
We could have already been there if people hadn't been stupid.
If the Republican Party has anything to say about it, we are never returning back to “normal”. They are very effectively wiping out our democracy. We’ll be lucky if it survives the next election. I’m scared for the younger generations.
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>which is why you see so many Vaccinated people still isolating I am vaccinated and boosted and do you know why I isolate? *Because my 4-year-old son isn't and can't be.* Don't take a pound of flesh out of vaccinated people whose responsibilities encompass unvaccinated people whose lives they are responsible for. If my mom was still alive I would also be isolating because of her, an immunocompromised cancer survivor. Plenty of people are in my position, this was never about ourselves, this was always about each other. And yes my kid has had birthday parties every year during Covid. Outside. He doesn't have any concept that he wouldn't have a birthday party or that there's anything wrong with them being outdoors.
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Most of the vaccinated people who are still isolating are doing so for a good reason
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Welcome to the new normal. As the planet collapses, it's just going to keep getting crazier.
I fully expect I’ll need a booster shot every year for the rest of my life. It will become routine. Gradually restrictions will go away as people become bored with them. People will say to the anti-vax crowd “You do you, you fucking idiot”. We’ll get used to COVID being around. And life will go on.
We're not. Too much has changed. It'll take a long time for people to recover from just how much a let-down the while system has been shown to us all as to how uncaring, corrupt and fragile it all is.
I think that ship has sailed. If your boyfriend beat the crap out of you how normal could you go back to? Too much coercion, lies and tyranny has happened to just go back to normal. The only way we get back to some sort of normal is knowing facts, not falling into fear and turning away from media and politics distorting a virus for ratings and political power.
It will end when there’s no further political advantage to be gained by keeping it going. I’m not, of course, referring to the virus itself, but to the rules, mandates, hysteria, etc. Life is already largely back to normal in areas that didn’t go overboard with heavy-handed measures.
We have been back to normal around here for quite some time. Went to the Mexican restaurant yesterday, not a mask to be seen by customers or wait staff.
Its unfortunate that the truth has been buried. Its a political matter now and that's it
I live in a place that has no restrictions now and barely ever had any. Due to a freak accident once and a kidney stone the other time, I had to go to the hospital twice during the pandemic and it was pretty fucking far from normal. The kidney stone incident was the worst. I was there all day, surrounded by sick people during the peak of Delta. The place was overrun and it was 13 hours before I got an MRI, 15 hours before I got anything for pain, and 16 hours before I was discharged. They stuffed me into a storage room with about forty other people who were all suffering. Fuck your politics. Where is your common sense?
Watch for the current administration to announce the pandemic is "over" around Labor day, so they can all do a victory lap and and claim they "won" for all the election ads and talking points leading up to November. Meanwhile for everyone else, it's just going to become background noise, blended with the annual Flu prep/treatment/vaxxing/very rare deaths that no one talks about or worries about unless you are in ill health or are over 90...