Will we return to a pre-pandemic normal?

The short answer is no, here’s why.

We are all imagining our life before the pandemic, meeting up with our friends, going out to restaurants and travelling anywhere we want, freedom is bliss. But life is going to change even more drastically over the next 5 years.

At the start of the pandemic in the UK, we were slow to react and the UK government continues to think that herd immunity will solve the problem which unsurprisingly has turned out to be a disastrous. True — we have more than one vaccine to help fight the virus but this doesn’t mean that we can all go about our daily lives as we did after we have the vaccine.

Pandemics in the past

If you look back at history pandemics are no stranger to us, there was the Spanish Flu in 1918 which lasted 2 years and the black death in 1347 which lasted four years. They both had different effects on the human body but it was also a time when medicine had a long way to go in treating and diagnosing people so we cannot say for certain that the figures or timelines are completely accurate as there was no proper testing except assessing a patient’s symptoms.

At the time of the Spanish Flu and the Black Death choices were limited and not having internet connection meant you were really cut off from everybody. After a period of time, people were able to return to their normal lives but this was before the invention of the internet and people did not travel abroad like we do in today’s world so being in another country was not something that most people even considered. The benefit we have during the Covid-19 pandemic is accessing the internet, this has helped us to continue speaking to our friends and family, to work from home and there has been a surge in the number of apps and technology driven solutions that allow us to remain at home.

What does this mean for our future?

At the very earliest it has been predicted by Bill Gates and Dr. Soumya Swaminathanthat from the WHO that it won’t be until 2022 that we start to see some immunity from Covid-19 and even then we will still need to practice social distancing measures. A lot of news outlets have reported that this means the world will go back to normal and everybody will have been vaccinated, but I think this is wrong to assume. This prediction does not take into account the problems with the supply of the vaccine that we are currently facing, the problems associated with Brexit and import/export controls or the mutations that we are seeing and there is still so much that we don’t know about this virus.

Businesses and the way we work

We are only at the start of 2021 so even if some normalcy returns in 2022 this seems a long way to go with no certainty over our futures. Businesses will adapt or have already adapted in order to survive and jobs that can’t be done using technology will not last so people will start learning new skills that enable them to work from home.

We have already seen a rise in working from home and some businesses surrendering their office lease. It has been reported that Latham and Watkins a top US law firm has decided not to take on their lease of a London office until 2026 at the earliest. This shows us the appetite to not to return to the office and that if we are still in a situation where we have to practice social distancing in 2026 and beyond they have the option to give up their lease.

For employers that like to micro-manage their staff, permanently working from home won’t be a good thing, as we have learnt from the great work from home experiment that it can work and its going to be the way forwards.

We might not see a rise in salaries or bonuses though as businesses will use the pandemic as their reasons for not giving staff an increase even if they are doing making a profit. There are always winners where there are losers and some will be making huge profits even though some others are about to collapse.

International travel

We will probably see quarantine measures more widespread to prevent the spread of the virus. This will not be welcomed by couples that have been separated by the restrictions or those that are not able to see their loved ones abroad, or even just taking a simple holiday to have a break from all the chaos.

This will force us to travel abroad less as it will be unaffordable to do multiple trips or weekend getaways like before.

Social life and wellbeing

We will socialise at home rather than going out and there will be an increase in creativity as more people flock to books, art, music, and cooking as escapism. Wellbeing will be a priority for us over the rat race that we were all used to before, people will find spending time with their loved ones and making memories with them are more important than climbing up the corporate ladder and we will have more appreciation for nature and looking after our planet.

Rather than looking at the past we have to look to the future. It’s not all negative, the outcome of the pandemic I believe will be positive and help us to learn more about the way we should be living and how to look after ourselves whilst appreciating everything we have even more than we did before.