What will our 'New Normal' be like?

[mab01uk]

An extract below from an article written by Richard Littlejohn below. Please also read the complete article in link, (it may make you smile in parts), before making any comments to ensure the extract is taken in context. Try to keep to what you think the 'New Normal' be and not to veer off into politics....or no doubt the thread will have to be locked! Before I read his column today I had myself been wondering what the 'New Normal' will eventually be and sadly I think he may not be that far off the mark? Like RLJ says I hope I'm also proved horribly wrong....

A look forward to Covid Britain in 2024
"Too many people have tasted power during this pandemic and they're not about to give it up any time soon without a fight. The scientists, so-called 'experts', civil servants, Toytown politicians, coppers, covid marshals and self-appointed covigilantes are having a field day throwing their weight around. Once you give anyone any authority, especially if it comes with a hi-viz jacket, they will always . . . well, you know the rest.
But if you think that when everyone's had the first and second jabs we can get back to the Old Normal, I'm here to tell you we won't. Ever.
People will still be required to social distance in five, maybe ten years' time. Who knows? Fancy face masks are here to stay, not just a transient fashion fad.
Working From Home will become a way of life for millions.
Along with long-term unemployment for millions more, as thousands of recently profitable businesses go to the wall, never to recover.
The notion that our ghost town centres will be revived in a hurry with affordable housing and a continental- style cafe culture is for the birds.
Even though the tree-hugging bike lane zealots suffered a setback with the defeat of London's mayor Genghis Khan's insane anti-car Streetspace scheme in the High Court this week, they'll be back everywhere.
They won't give up without a fight, either.
Public transport services will be slashed to the bone and become ever more expensive.
Air travel will struggle to recover, despite pent-up demand.
The economist Milton Friedman got it right when he said there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government programme.
Free school meals all year round and other expensive social handouts are here to stay.
No ambitious politician dares take away anything which has come to be seen as an entitlement. Life's a ratchet not a pendulum.
Sorry if this has been a column to slash your wrists by. I hope I'm proved horribly wrong.
The lasting, most depressing thing about this pandemic — tragic loss of life aside — is the way our assumptions about liberty and democracy have been turned on their head.
And repeated scaremongering has persuaded far too many people to accept it's for their own good.
This was once a country where you could do what you liked as long as it wasn't specifically proscribed by law.
Now we're required to do only what we're told by ministers who make laws on a whim and hand the police new powers without even bothering to put any of it before Parliament.
Covid has permitted an allegedly Conservative Government to create a punishment culture in which people constantly have to ask whether they are 'allowed' to do this, that or the other.
Welcome to the New Normal."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... -2024.html

[mk1]

Ha, ha, that's a grim suggested future isn't it.

Personally I reckon that if we give it 18 months, maybe 2 years everyone will have forgotten all about Covid bollocks & things will have returned pretty much back to normal.

The upheaval caused by this hiccup is certainly no more grave than the Flu pandemic of 1918 when 55 million people died, that didn't "change the world" its not as big an upheaval as WW2 where within 5 years or so after being totally devastated Europe came back stronger & more "civilised" than ever.

About the only thing that human beings are any good at is coping. This is just another thing to "get over & forget about".

[Polarsilver]

Todays 5 year old children will remember the Covid generation mistakes for the next 25 years ..because they will be paying out massive Tax on everything.. the big issue in year 2046 will be IF the Gov.UK have managed & cleared off the Covid Debt by then

Glad i am on the way out & not on the way in

[Spider]

I hope this doesn't get too far off track or bring in hot tempered replies.

I've observed over the past roughly 3 - 4 years quite a mist-trust of Authority, particularly in the UK that's only gone in to over-drive since Covid hit. I might well be missing something here as I don't have my feet on the ground there, but I do follow 'matters' and speak daily with many who live in the UK. When I discuss this with them and break it down, I can only come away from it seeing it as an Inconvenience (and a big one at that) rather than some kind of over bearing control measures. I did have a chuckle at some of the humor in that article, but I hope it's misguided.

One only needs to look at the stats of infection and death rates, particularly in the UK, where firm communicable disease control measure were slow to be put in place. Here in Australia, our Government acted swiftly and firmly, with measure similar to those in the UK only just recently effected. One only needs to compare stats between the 2 countries to see that they work well.

It was further highlighted, bolded and underlined, just how well the measure work and also just how contagious this thing is when for the very very large part, it was under control in Australia for months, with new infection rates being in the single digits, until the Victorians just had to have their utterly inconsiderate BLM Protest March, while few infections were traced directly to that, it sent a signal to the wider Victorian community of 'to hell with it', resulting in a very hard lockdown of that State for about 3 months, that's had huge economic effects on the rest of the country.

It'll all be a roller coaster for a while yet, but I do believe the 'end' is in sight, though it would 'end' anytime soon.

I can't see some things ever going back to 'normal' which may not be a bad thing. One glaring deficiency I've seen over the years has been a total lack of screening at Airport and Seaside terminals - long over due.

[Exminiman]

Ha, ha, that's a grim suggested future isn't it.

Personally I reckon that if we give it 18 months, maybe 2 years everyone will have forgotten all about Covid bollocks & things will have returned pretty much back to normal.

The upheaval caused by this hiccup is certainly no more grave than the Flu pandemic of 1918 when 55 million people died, that didn't "change the world" its not as big an upheaval as WW2 where within 5 years or so after being totally devastated Europe came back stronger & more "civilised" than ever.

About the only thing that human beings are any good at is coping. This is just another thing to "get over & forget about".

Agreed ..pretty much sums up my own thoughts
Remember the 10 year recession ? (What recession), humans seem programmed to move on from stuff like this really quickly.
It will obviously take government a while to pay back all the money they have borrowed, but I have heard of a few respectable sources predicting a pronounced Covid Bounce, as soon as we are let out again.

EDIT :This graph, I lifted from the Guardian (dont normally read it) its bit out of date, but it shows debt as a percentage of GDP, as far as I can find out we are still not over 100% of GDP in terms of borrowing. SO maybe gives a bit of perspective compared to WW2 and The Great Depression, borrowing wise, we are where we were in the 1960s

6C87EC47-8BE9-4D5D-8220-35F763B40314.png

[Andrew1967]

Covid is here to stay. We will learn to control it, like hopefully the vaccines will, but I can see it being like the flu, we will possibly need maybe annual vaccinations against any potential new strains and there will be casualties along the way. Anyone who thinks Covid is simply going to disappear is mistaken. This is not the only Coronavirus and others are still active, albeit much milder.

We might be clever, but the only pandemic disease we have ever cured is, I believe Smallpox, even the Black Death still kills, albeit a minute amount each year. Most are controlled by the very thing that caused them to spread, sanitation and general improvements to health and cleanliness.

The only way I can see that the world will ever clear its debts to Covid is for the world to write off the Covid debt. Whether that could happen, I dont know but companies write off debts, so maybe ??

The only people to really benefit from this is the likes of Pfizer and the PPE producing companies who are going to make billions.

The effects of this pandemic will undoubtedly go on for years, exacerbated by the stupid and selfish actions of the human race and dilly dallying of governments on suitable measures to stop the spread for fear of upsetting the minority to protect the majority. You only have to see how stupid people are in their thinking asking the government when restrictions will be lifted when only 5 million out of 68 million have been vaccinated. There's plenty of 50 somethings being hospitalised and dying now and it will be a while before they get the jab. Yes, we DO need to get back to normal ASAP to save jobs and the economy, I totally agree, but to what expense. Its a huge and almost impossible balancing game.

As has been said, this isn't as bad as the Spanish Flu of 1918, yet... no one can be sure how this is going to end with new strains being identified and it will only take a mutation that we cant develop a vaccine for, for it to be that bad. I'm sure I read the 1918 pandemic went around the world three times before it died out !

[Geoffrey]

I'm sure I read the 1918 pandemic went around the world three times before it died out !

It did.

[MiNiKiN]

>>Philosophical excursion: START<<

There will be a new "normal" - of course - because the future normal is a consequence of things happening every day.

But the question is rather "will it teach us a lesson we are going to learn from?" - the answer is "NO".
Didn't happen after the financial crisis in 2008, won't happen as an outcome of the Covid pandemic.

Humanity is so stuck in our current economic system with all its massive, unpredictable or incomprehensible consequences from our exploitation of nature, that it is too big a task to change. In particular because too many corporations see a short term profit before the effect really kicks in. And the majority of individuals cannot even to the slightest grasp or realise the effects of our wrong-doing.

The financial business is a "game" which rules do not consider finite resources. FAIL!
The economy relies to massive amounts on travelling around the world, hence spreading all sorts of deseases quickly. FAIL!
Mother earth is not in balance any more, and we as humanity tipped it over.

But will we change? Again a"no" from me, as the changes required are too huge to tackle. Humanity only ever changes for a while after a real catastrophy (e.g. WW2).
And what we, as a so called first world, experienced in recent decades seems not the catastrophy required to trigger us. My guess is there is some real big disruption coming - not by anything the conspiracy theorists think, but by nature. The question here is not "if", but "when".

The Covid pandemic was just another warning, whose significance we will again not rightly construe. One one hand we know what spread the disease so fast, but we will "Carry on regardless"...

BTW: one of the reasons such great changes of mindset don't happen, is that humans get into a state of "cognitive disonance" if their beliefs are disputed and disrupted, and hence rather deny the facts instead. Applies for individuals and seemingly for humanity as a whole too.

>>Philosophical excursion: END<<

[IslandBlue]

>>Philosophical excursion: START<<
>>Philosophical excursion: END<<

I'm not a doctor, scientist, economist or environmental expert but I fear you may well be correct. Unless it's undeniably and blatantly obvious to the majority that change is necessary we're unlikely to alter our behaviour until it's too late, possibly it already is, which would be just another reason to carry on regardless....

[floormanager]

Personally, I can't see a way out of this. I work for a small pharma company and just this weekend, we lost 10% of our workforce due to two positive COVID tests, 18 others had been in contact, so have to isolate. Today, we made nothing and lost £££££s

At present, we are vaccinating like mad, with the aim of doing all the UK adults by September. Once we've done this, the first people to be vaccinated, will need a booster, as there is evidence that the vaccine's impact with have diminished by then. So, we start again, vaccinating all the adults, on and on we go, round and round. People say, ah, we vaccinate for flu every year so what's the problem? Well, it's a very small amount of people that get a flu jab, only this year have the over 50s been added to the list, so it's not going to be like the flu vaccine. The massive vaccination effort will go on and on; who's going to do this? My sister is jabbing people in her spare time, as well as he normal NHS job. Who's going to pay for it all and what happens if the virus mutates and starts to hit children hardest, as did the 1918 Spanish flu? There's no vaccine, flu or COVID for kids as you cannot perform clinical trials on kids for ethical reasons. And what about the other 7 billion in the World? There's not enough plants making vaccine to inoculate the entire World. We will have to learn to live with it but I fear packed music concerts, pubs, football matches will be a think of the past for many years.

God I hope I am wrong.