From the earliest moments the scale of The new Coronavirus, and its expansion, became obvious, many of realized this was going to lead to a shattering crisis and would test the resilience of many. Possibly even impact their futures as well.
As countries acted, swiftly or rather slowly, the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t disappoint and totally changed life and lives. For most of us that meant a long #quarantinelife, possibly with loss of jobs, for other it contained health scares or worse, and for others the continued existence of their business was and still is challenged. In each of those three cases, the less gifted ones didn’t make it.
As I am writing this, several countries have started to discuss the actual reopening of life, or to loose up the lockdown. Truth is, at this time, barely any country has an actual understanding of the epidemic or knows the actual state on the ground as only very few countries have reached any scale of mass testing (per capita) and thus has no true information about the spread of the virus.
Thus most countries are very cautious in their approach to loosening their respective lockdowns and many are speaking of the new normal. A new normal which seems to include compulsory social distancing and possibly also forced use of facial masks for the next months to come. At least, until antibody tests are common and countries can force new tracking methods upon us will be more able to determine the herd’s resilience and thus immunity. Or until a vaccine is found.
Any more relaxing loosening up is like walking blindfolded into a forest, leaving millions of people with lesser immunity systems at the mercy of those too confident to follow social distancing rules.
Despite ever louder cries for the economy, and life, to restart, rulers are cautious and with rather good reason. Whoever expects that life will reboot ASAP is deluded or a denialist. And while peer pressure may speed up the further stages of loosening up, assuming no second wave, the truth is that life will reboot slowly and in a different way. The economy just doesn’t support a socially distanced life. Or at least not yet.
Because social distancing, and masks, isn’t just about not getting infected but even more so about not infecting others, the mainstream media and official agencies will continue their drive of spreading fear. An arguably justified drive.
Eventually, it will lead to the normal in the new normal and how we live our lives will have changed. By around 6 feet and with some millimeters of cloth covering around half of our face.
Luckily in the last two decades the Internet has built the foundations for life to change and for economies to adapt to the new social. Amazon is now apparently considered a “utility company” by columnists and opinion writers. And, as if, Netflix and Chill wasn’t enough yet, entertainers now entertain from their sofa with even more live-streams than Facebook and YouTube already offered. And the luckiest amongst us may even see a switch from the cubicle life to a remote workforce as Teams and Zoom have found more and more adoption and the media’s fear drive will lead to increased adoption in life of social distancing.
Leaving one sector at risk of acute extermination, one of the most vulnerable sectors and which has had to lay off thousands of people around the world. While the already doomed retail sector has in most cases been able to switch to a delivery model maintaining many jobs and often even hiring new employees, the hospitality sector has not found such luck. Whether it can even recover in the next months, and years, is now an acute question. Even more so since many people have discovered new joys, joys like cooking at home and even baking bread. All while the fear machine of the MSM and official agencies continue to raise “awareness” in order to avoid a brutal second wave and renewed lockdown when life “reboots”.
In an ever more gentrified world, habits have changed, in last two to three decades, and while this has often seen a massive increase in eating out, the cost of gentrification has also let to many restaurants operation at very small profit margins. The ever changing world of streaming and always more “closed” socializing has also led to ever less bars and pubs surviving the changed culture.
Restaurants, and bars, were among the first to have to shutdown as the pandemic hospitals our lives, often having to write off thousands of stock all while facing months of continued and often ridiculously high leases for the premises. Staff was laid off almost immediately and many who tried out the delivery model discovered that it wasn’t economically for them. We have seen creative models such as outlets who switched to deliver recipes with the ingredients, but they have been far and between and more often than not didn’t generate the required volume either to continue to operate. Others have adopted much simpler menus, often not necessarily benefitting their reputation and standards they set out to to bring to your table.
A table now replaced by your kitchen table and covered with homemade meals.
Even assuming that in some months the hospitality sector may be able to reopen, hire staff again, and stock up the question to be asked is whether people will want to go out again and pay a (hefty) premium for things from the old normal. A premium which may be ever more as the disposable levels of many (former) employees may have changed and others are too busy saving for their deferred rents, utility bills, and maybe even to pay back their Trump bucks.
Will you even enjoy socializing after social distancing has become an integral part of your life? Will you enjoy the atmosphere in a socially distancing compliant restaurant and your food is brought by a masked waiter? Or will you prefer to order (franchised) pizza and Netflix and chill instead?
Of course, if you’re one of many thousands Instagram fashion influencers you will enjoy the free chair to put your handbag on. Of course, you will.