With the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic hopefully behind us, a new era has begun. Will we simply return to our pre-pandemic lives? Or will mask-wearing and physical distancing practices have a lasting effect on our daily routines?
Imagine a dangerous disease looming over a world of panicked people. Though slightly less dramatic than the popular 2011 film “Contagion,” this was our reality. And unless you’ve been living under a gigantic rock for the past year and a half, you know that the SARS-CoV-2 virus arrived and conquered our lives, and the rest is history. The effects of this worldwide pandemic, more commonly known as COVID-19, have taken their toll on people and nature alike, ranging from the environmentalist’s heaven to the extrovert’s prison.
As summarized by Bloomberg CityLab, “two images of the post-pandemic city have emerged. One is the urbanist’s utopia of widened sidewalks, ample bike lanes, parking lots converted to green spaces. The other is a dystopia of empty streets and boarded-up shops, a barren cultural landscape in which the diversity, energy and pageantry (has) been replaced by a tableau of socially-distanced and masked citizens, scurrying quickly between their jobs and their homes.”
Masks, distancing, hand-washing
Most people have seen the drastic effects of the pandemic in the shortage of ICU beds and the massive COVID-19 death toll. Many have become accustomed to wearing face masks, face shields and bandannas when going out in public. Although the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are possible solutions to this issue, the fear and apprehension that radiates around the world may encourage folks to continue wearing masks, practicing physical distancing, regularly using hand sanitizer and engaging in frequent hand-washing long after the pandemic is over.
People are expressing new social norms more verbally and visually, such as normalizing six-foot stickers in stores and restaurants or adhering to written policies about sanitation in public spaces. And who knows how long this will continue? It may last for the next few months, the rest of this year or even beyond that.
Work from home
However, just because there is an ongoing pandemic does not mean people have stopped working altogether. Work and school took on an entirely new form in the midst of this pandemic. Online, remote meeting platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have allowed us to stay in contact with classmates and professors, colleagues, friends and loved ones through the toughest of times.
This convenient form of staying connected with people across the globe cancels out the need for commuting from point A to point B, essentially saving time and energy. It is no big surprise then that Zoom and Teams may be here to stay. Schools and higher education institutions are adapting to this new way of life. Summer courses, labs and regular semester classes are being actively remodeled to fit the needs of remote students.
Higher education institutions and K-12 schools have remade many classes to fit the needs of remote students during the pandemic. There’s also a high chance that corporate businesses will permanently integrate this virtual workplace from here on out. From standard virtual corporate interviews to virtually proctored standardized exams, working from home is the trend of the future. Even campus clubs and organizations across the country have found ways to adapt their events and meetings for virtual spaces, though meeting in-person would have been ideal.
“I’m not a futurist, but I really hope to move back to seeing some fun activities and events and be able to engage and have a vibrant campus community,” said Kevin McCarthy, assistant vice president for Student Affairs and dean of students.
Accessible medical assistance
Along with widespread COVID-19 testing and vaccines on the way, other great sources of remote medical assistance have emerged from the COVID-19 crisis. Doctors and medical professionals have started carrying out virtual check-ups over the phone or over live telehealth appointments. Patients can just log in to their medical account and schedule time to meet with a doctor virtually or call in an emergency right there.
But clinics and hospitals aren’t the only ones trying to maintain a high standard in regard to health. In fact, NCC’s very own Dyson Wellness Center (DWC) collaborated with TimelyMD and a new telehealth service specifically for students called Students Care. This 24/7 service is completely free and fully confidential. It covers both mental and medical health for full-time NCC students free of charge. In addition, this new system is here to stay, even after the pandemic is over. Tatiana Sifri, director of the DWC and a licensed clinical professional counselor, speaks about the ease of the new telehealth service and how it can help students.
“With the new telehealth system, we still have our counselors and medical staff but now there’s also Students Care,” said Sifri. “What I like about it is that when we are closed, and you are up late studying, it’s nice to have that option at 11 (o’clock) at night to talk to a counselor or medical (professional) in the moment. And you’re just going to wait a few minutes.”
Restaurants, stores, public spaces
Let’s talk about food. For obvious reasons, buffets and similar high-contact areas in restaurants and stores have been, for the most part, eliminated, if not abandoned. In addition, there has been an increase in online food orders delivered straight to homes through apps like Grubhub, Doordash and UberEats.
As stated by Deliveroo CEO Will Shu in a CNBC article, “our initial analysis suggests that COVID-19 has accelerated consumer adoption of these delivery services by about two to three years. We saw this incredible increase in new customers joining the platform. My bet was that this was going to be the future of food delivery”.
Handshakes, high fives
Some things that have come out of this pandemic have been beneficial. Creative ways to solve everyday problems caused by a worldwide crisis have emerged. Some innovative examples are those of deliver-only restaurants and direct-to-consumer movie premieres. And while these tactics will continue to exist in the post-pandemic world, we will have to cut other unnecessary, pre-COVID habits from our daily lives.
For example, excessive touching, handshakes and high fives are all things that have dropped out of our lifestyles slowly but surely as we were forced to stay six feet apart. And it is unlikely that these practices will come back soon, judging from how suddenly they were eliminated from our lives.
Privacy matters
In the distant, or not-so-distant, future, smartphones may actually be a radical solution to tracking the spread of COVID-19 in humans. The Bluetooth in your smartphone tracks how long you’ve been at a location and who else was near you for several minutes, so your phone could easily track the possible spread of disease.
While this may sound invasive and unlikely, the reality is that not much personal information is required to track a person. Also, a few countries, such as the UK and Singapore, have already started thinking about smartphone COVID-19 tracking.
As described by MIT News, “Phone owners would get involved by downloading an app that enables this (COVID-19 tracking) system. After a positive diagnosis, a person would receive a QR code from a health official. By scanning the code through that app, that person can upload their log to the cloud. Anyone with the app could then initiate their phones to scan these logs. A notification, if there’s a match, could tell a user how long they were near an infected person and the approximate distance.”
The most obvious problem with this solution is that downloading an app is optional, so unless it is mandated, not everyone would consider installing it. For those who do, it isn’t always possible to leave out personal data because it is sometimes required for identification purposes. Without proper privacy measures, this futuristic approach to tracking the disease could impede the process if we are not careful.
Future implications
On a less serious note, since most of us lived through a toilet paper shortage last year, we can expect that come Halloween, fewer houses will be TP-ed and more candy will be saved for those long days spent inside, possibly attending online meetings. In fact, we might as well say goodbye to snow days since most classes and work meetings can easily be held online.
But good times are just on the horizon. We might not ever completely return to our pre-COVID lives since we are forever changed by the pandemic, but we can try our best to stay safe and return to the “new normal” times.
“I think we’ve learned a ton from this experience and we (will) continue to learn, and I believe that some things may be different going forward,” said McCarthy. “I’m optimistic to see what things will look like in August. I’m hopeful that we hopefully saw the worst of it, but we have to continue to take this seriously, even if it feels like we’re doing better.”
All in all, we can certainly expect more distancing offline and more work online, even in our post-pandemic lives. But as long as we remember the three W’s to ward off COVID-19 — wear a mask, wash your hands and watch your distance — we can make a quick recovery and continue to live our lives in a COVID-free world.
