When Will It Be Normal Again?

If you've been reading all the COVID-19 coverage online or watching cable news, you must've seen a title of an article or segment that opines about when will we be normal again? As if "normal" is the same for everyone, but I get the point. Let me start with the answer, then the analysis.

When will we be normal again? Never.

Seriously, never. Or at least never in our lifetime, though a lot of people will eventually return to some variation of their previous "normal." But, unless your head is completely full of air or rocks, you must know that if a pandemic like this could happen and it's not that fatal, imagine one where it is not only virulent but kills a large number of those who become infected.

So, we have to accept the fact that there will be a new normal but even how that will look is hard to predict.

Think about dining out in a restaurant. How many do you go to that are packed cheek to jowl with tables and customers and waitstaff? Probably too many to count, right? If you were the owner, how would you reconfigure it?

Here's what I would do:

• Reservations-only seating
• Staff must be checked daily for temperature and perhaps O2 levels
• Customers must be checked for temperature and O2 levels as well
• While in the restaurant, waitstaff must wear masks and surgical gloves (same for kitchen staff, too)
• Remove half the tables or more to allow for 6' minimum social distancing
• Tables, chairs, and other surfaces need to be wiped down thoroughly after each customer leaves

And even this isn't perfect. What if an asymptomatic person comes into the restaurant? No fever, O2 saturation levels are fine, but they're shedding viruses left and right--how do you prevent this? Sure, on-the-spot testing would help, but even if it was available, who could afford to do that every day for every person passing through the doors?

This is just one example. Think of your own and then you start to see the sheer magnitude that this challenge presents.

So "normal," as we used to know if, is history. What happens going forward is up to us as a race because just returning to our old ways will only open the doors for the same kind of pandemic or even worse--the one that will take out humanity altogether.

And what's the most asinine thing I see now are the covidiots protesting that their liberties are being assaulted. My only words to them are these: get with the program or get ready to lose you life or that of your loved one.

Yours in quarantine,

Michael