Looking forward to a new kind of normal. (And happy lunar new year to all...)

It’s been a while since I have written since the earlier days of the pandemic. Because, quite frankly, it’s been somewhat uninspiring.

We’ve motored along. Widespread restrictions in place. Fear of contracting the virus ever present. Social activities to an almost non-existent minimum.

At work things have been steady. Visitations to the ER has risen once again, partly because the fear of visiting the hospital seems fading, partly due to the seemingly inability of physical clinics to actually see physical patients.

I’ve had my first jab. Sore arm and all. Waiting for the second.

All and all, it seems I kept being asked the same questions, “when will this be over?”

And I think it is time, we all put away that line of thought. Stop this waiting game. That’s not the right question.

Much of what we have done so far in this pandemic had been emergency measures. To stop or lower the spread. To keep everyone safe. To allow time for the science. To resume life when this is over.

Humanities have been tested so many times before, we were reminded. This, too, shall pass.

But will it? Maybe that isn’t quite the correct expectation. And I do believe, in most people’s minds, that they must be slowly realizing this as well.

Yes several vaccines had came at astonishing pace (although administration of them had been trailing expectations). Yes it seems we are less heavily indicted with ICU level cases in many jurisdictions. Yes it seems many countries had encountered second, or third, or fourth waves, and continued to work hard at squashing them with some degree of successes.

But it is becoming clear that none of these efforts will effectively remove the virus from the human race. There are too many variables. Vaccines will never be 100% effective. It will take years, if not impossible, to vaccinate everyone on earth. Evolution of the viral strain constantly threaten medical process thus far. And it is unrealistic to expect everyone to take the shot, or even the majority, at all.

I don’t think anyone can see a path in which this entirely leaves us behind. Not now, not next year, perhaps not ever.

So what are we to do?

For one, we should believe that although this will unlikely leave us, things shall get very much better. That part I do believe we can expect. As people get vaccinated, as cases in the vulnerable population continues to fall (as we have seen in vaccinated areas), as we get a better handle on timely diagnostics, and as we get more comfortable in dealing with this now “old” threat, things will get better. Our lives will get better.

But we should stop expecting to wait for the day when all that we knew before could return to normal as we had remembered.

Ultimately, it will be a decision of tolerance. How much, as a society, are we able to tolerate and manage the cases among us. How much influence, of such daily threats, can we accept while resuming as much of the life we missed as we could. Ethically and socially, what is the bar that we shall set in order to maintain some degree of livelihood, or as some would consider, to maintain the things that we have “to live for”?

Us human beings are a social animal, which is why I never lost faith in the days when we shall gather again, eat together again, hug each other, high-fives all around, attend movies and sports games and concerts, fly across the world and make new friends abroad, cruise on the open seas, stay in hotels and hostels openly together, and allow our grandchildren visit their grandparents without overdue concerns.

How will each of the above be done, in this new normal, with the threat of the virus STILL among us, but with a conscious decision to mitigate those risks, maintain maximum safety, while allowing life, the way us humans are meant to live, to carry on as much as we had once desired.

Those are the many, many, unanswered questions. Those shall be the proper ones for all of us to ask.

And among them, in my mind, international travel is the hardest one to tackle. It is also one I am most hungry to figure out.

It isn’t enough to say we would continue to hold off a few years for the situation to improve. For all we know, it might not. And for many others in their golden years, they cannot wait that long.

It also isn’t acceptable to say that we would screw it all and do things anyway and see what happens. The world cannot sustain that degree of recklessness.

It is time to think of how we can create a happy medium. And the sooner we do this, the sooner we can arrive at a happy “new normal”.

Life will continue to thrive. We just have to be very, very creative in how it shall do so.

So for all of us, time to ask a different set of questions, and much, much brainstorming to do….