COVID-19 and the Delusion of a New Normal

To say that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted social life across the globe is to say the very least. The impact of COVID-19 on social life is so enormous that things that were hitherto taken for granted have now become a luxury.

One of such things is an handshake, a tradition that dates back to as far as the 5th century BC. The new normal now appears to be greeting people with little or no physical contact to avoid the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Apart from the avoidance of handshakes or other physical contacts, another new normal is the use of facemasks in public and crowded places. We are told that facemasks reduce the risk of spreading the virus from person to person.

Also, the new normal has seen many people not only working from home but shopping online and having goods and services delivered to their homes. Kids are forced to learn from home while religious gatherings have gone visual. Frankly, it is a tough and tormenting time for the human race.

While the tides of the new normal is sweeping across the world with social life greatly disrupted, however, experts and pundits seem to be carried away by the euphoria of the moment, predicting that the new normal may have come to stay with us forever.

The above view was further reinforced by WHO which recently declared that the virus may never go away and we may have to live with it. Therefore, some health experts feel that the wearing of facemasks in public, the observance of social distancing, and the frequent washing of hands alongside other social disruptions will become the new normal. And there is nothing anybody can do about it.

This writer believes that the enthronement of the new normal is a delusion and an extremist view of the dynamics of the human society that has neither historical or empirical validity. For instance, the Spanish Flu of 1918 killed approximately 50 million people yet the world return to normalcy afterwards. People did not crawl under their beds forever nor did they avoid crowded places ad infinitum. Whether we like it or not, man is naturally a gregarious being and will always find a way to physically interact with others.

In the case of COVID-19 that has a remarkably low mortality rate of 0.5% - 1% with over 50% of infected persons being asymptomatic, it is delusional to imagine that the new normal will last forever even if a vaccine is not developed. People are already getting fed up with the lock downs as the chants of give us freedom or death gathers momentum.

In these circumstances, it will only take a matter of time before herd immunity is developed in most societies and life will return to what it was before the outbreak of COVID-19. If the Spanish Flu with the millions of lives it claimed cannot halt social life in its tracks, COVID-19 is very far from doing so. Like the flames from a stick of cigarette, the new normal is transient, incapable of lasting forever.