The New Normal, Living on Planet COVID

"[The virus will keep churning through the population, keep] trying to find humans to do what it does."
"We won't emerge from lockdown suddenly immune, the vast majority of us remain susceptible."
Michael Osterholm, infectious disease epidemiologist

"The world as we know it is dissolving. But behind it comes a new world, the formation of which we can at least imagine. Can anyone remember the political correctness debate?"
"The infinite number of cultural wars? What, we will ask ourselves, was that all about?"
"[The global economy is recovering; the heart muscle quivered, but didn't stop] as if the economy was a breathing being that can also nap or sleep and even dream."
Matthias Horx, German futurist

"Let's be honest here, we are talking about mortality of maybe between one in 1,000 or one in 100. We still don't know, but we're not talking the Great Plague."
"We're not talking about nuclear war or three degrees of climate change or artificial intelligence gone rogue, or super-enhanced transhumans wreaking havoc, which are all possibilities futurists ponder every day."
"We're talking about a relatively weak story that scared the hell out of people, and scared me because it scared people so much that I didn't expect it would be so profound."
"We need to dig our heels into the ground and say we're not simply going to accept a 'new normal' without debate and discussion and a vote."
"We all have to reinvent ourselves. [If we can't shake hands, worship together, eat together, the very core of humanity], what it means to be human and how we thrive [is undermined]." 
Nikola Danaylov, futurist, Toronto

"The world has a lot of inertia. We built up the world we had been living in until a few months ago for a long time, and we really got used to it."
"We've changed temporarily but most people are eager to get back."
"Some politicians will get fired. Pandemic budges will increase. We'll do a lot more tracing and tracking and trying to prepare for the 'next one' [but life returns as before]."
Robin Hanson, economist, futurist, George Mason University

"Airlines will reserve flights according to high or low risk, full-face shields at festivals and ball games."
:Normally after natural disasters, after the earth stops moving and the flood waters recede, we gather our wits, mourn our dead and try piecing our lives back together."
"[This crisis is different, it's like a cancer diagnosis.] The year or years that follow the lifting of stay-at-home orders won't be true recovery, but something better understood as adaptive recovery, in which we learn to live with the virus even as we root for medical progress."
Juliette Kayyem, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official

An employee wearing protective gear conducts a disinfection inside an Air Europa’s aircraft at Son Sant Joan’s Airport in Palma de Mallorca on April 30, 2020, as the country prepares to ease its tough lockdown measures. JAIME REINA/AFP via Getty Images

These are not normal times. And nor might any of us have been able to imagine the breadth and depth of changes to lives we have always been accustomed to, changing so radically in so short a time in a desperate effort globally to stave off the impetuous resolve of a newly-emerged zoonotic to place itself at the very heart of what it means to be human; to take the humanity out of us and replace it with an aversion rather than an attraction to others, as social creatures that we are.

Or were. Under new restrictions imposed for the 'good of our health', not to mention longevity, we may never again be as freely impetuous as to rejoice in the close physical and emotional presence of others, from those we love within our family groups, to those we casually associate with as friends, acquaintances, neighbours and work fellows. We are by nature gregarious animals, taking pleasure in the company of others; we have not been designed to shrink in the near proximity of other people.

People wearing face masks as a preventative measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus cross a street in the Causeway Bay shopping district in Hong Kong on May 1, 2020. DALE DE LA REY/AFP via Getty Images

Yet this is what we have been reduced to in surprisingly short order. We recoil in fear at the prospect of becoming too physical close to someone who may after all be harbouring the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a dreadfully infectious, vicious disease which may or may not totally debilitate us briefly, or alternately cause a respiratory condition so severe it can and will kill us. No more affectionate hugs, kisses or closely confidential exchanges for fear of loosing a virus-infected droplet.

In most countries of the global reach COVID-19 has come and conquered, leaving populations of millions quivering with trepidation, quaking with outright fear for their lives; a well-grounded fear, as news media grimly report on a daily basis the carnage caused by this new zoonotic unleashed in Wuhan, China, in reflection of an Asian delicacy so popular in cuisine featuring wild animal carcases lovingly prepared for the dinner table. A virus endemic to wild animals leaped the species divide, and now we tremble with fear.

People wait while adhering to social distancing for a food distribution that will provide two boxes containing maize flour, cooking fat, salt and green grams for over 250 people by the Kenya Red Cross during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nairobi, Kenya, on May 1, 2020. PATRICK MEINHARDT/AFP via Getty Images

The new 'normal' bears scant resemblance to the spontaneity of the 'old' normal. We now have a very particular, specialized costume in hospitals and in public that declares our determination not to be yet another statistic, but to defend ourselves and resist the virus so intent on human destruction. Visors, eyeglasses, face masks and gloves have become de rigueur, as a 'normal' reaction to the potential of infection, although there are no guarantees should one finger the wrong surface.

The workplace, whether on a construction site, a farm or an office building, will never be the same again. Although real estate is costly, stifling cubicles are out and distancing is in, ergo working from home is set to become 'normal', attractive for some, anathema for others. Will the lockdown be locked into permanent place with some measure of loosening, to become second nature in weary acceptance to us all, even those now demonstrating violently against that ultimate control removing freedom of choice?

Will we forever be locked in an never-ending cycle of lockdown, flattening the curve, release from lockdown, a raging return of infection, lockdown and achieving a measure of control, to be repeated and repeated ad infinitum? Or will a hope-cherished scientific breakthrough to break the back of the novel coronavirus come as a gift to humanity and solve the problem so we can return to real normalcy?

And then hope against hope that yet another in a long succession of increasingly vicious viruses will not again emerge...?

Employees walk by a sign “Heroes Work Here” outside of the Los Angeles USPS Plant on April 29, 2020, in Los Angeles, California. VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images

"Are we moving to a world where every 'contact' [if we can call it that] will have to be scheduled on Zoom, or managed in a non-spontaneous way, keeping distance, and observing rules, and checking that others observe them too?"
"We are in the midst of a massive 'real life experiment', exploring whether our brains and bodies can do without physical proximity."
Dr.Ophelia Deroy, faculty of philosophy of mind, Ludwig Maximillian University, Munich