Will this new normal last forever?

amother

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 9:34 pm

Is this permanent?
Will people stop dying? Or in 5 years from now will we still have to worry about this deadly fatal virus that a person can contract anywhere.
Will our children ever go back to school? Or is Zoom the new normal?
Will we have jobs?
Will we be stuck inside forever?
(I am very nervous and stressed out.)

Will this ever end?????

amother

Teal

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 10:14 pm

amother [ OP ] wrote:

It's not permanent. The "good" thing about pandemics is that they never are. We'll get herd immunity eventually. The way we're doing it now is better because it saves lives, but we are prolonging the pain we'll be feeling until there is herd immunity. The slower we let people get infected, the longer this is going to take.

Your kids will go back to school, you'll have a job. You know what happened after the Spanish Flu of 1918? The Roaring 20's. The economy boomed and America was prosperous. In about a year from now, there is going to be so much pent up demand that the economy will come back.

We won't be stuck inside forever. Even if theoretically, this virus never ends, we won't be stuck inside forever. People just won't do it. They'll go crazy. There will be riots and civil unrest. Eventually, people en masse will say we'd rather face the virus than be stuck inside in poverty all day.

It'll be a change, but I don't think its as big as everyone is predicting. Think about 9/11. I was not yet an adult when it happened, but I don't think of it as a pivotal moment in my life. To me, airports have just always involved a lot of security. I think people will be nervous for a year or two, but you can't live your life like that. The same way people didn't fly as much the year following 9/11, but then the airline industry took off. We won't be scared forever, it just feels that way right now.

amother

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 10:42 pm

cookiewriter wrote:

We are not supposed to wish for things to back to the way they were. We are supposed to wish for moshiach

I don't know where you came up with this. We want things to be normal happy and healthy. For shuls to open. For schools so our children can learn Torah. For people to be safe. And yes, for Mashiach. Who said we are not supposed to wish for things for be normal? I don't know about "supposed" to. I know that we all want things to be okay.

amother

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 10:45 pm

amother [ Teal ] wrote:

Thank you for this post.

Do you think there's a potential for this virus to never go away? For such a deadly disease to continue circulating? It's so scary- it kills people so fast.

amother

Teal

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 10:50 pm

amother [ OP ] wrote:

Thank you for this post.

Do you think there's a potential for this virus to never go away? For such a deadly disease to continue circulating? It's so scary- it kills people so fast.

Nope. I think there's absolutely no potential for that. The "novel" coronavirus as the media is so fond of calling it isn't that novel. We've had coronaviruses for forever. We know how they act. You definitely have immunity after contracting it, and even if it is immunity for a limited amount of time, you won't get it so severely next time.

I guess the absolute worst case scenario if there was no immunity, which would be against all scientific knowledge, is that the virus would kill everyone who was vulnerable. But for the vast majority of the population this presents as a cold or a flu, so even if you got it over an over again, you'd essentially be getting a cold or flu over and over again. But thats an absolutely ridiculous scenario and would go against everything we know. Even so, it just proves that there's no way this will be here forever in this capacity.

amother

cornflower

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 11:00 pm

I'm not so sure the life before this was so normal either.
Parents rushing out early morning, working hard, some till late hours.
The school system, cooping up the kids inside for 8-9 hours a day.
And for frum life:
The frantic shopping before a new season.
The socializing in shul.
The extravagant simchas that most can't afford.
A messed up school system with vaads in control.

The only thing not normal right now is the people getting sick or the people passing away R"L.

Is the whole family being together less normal than the family never getting to see one another only on weekends.
Is getting married in the backyard less normal than the 100k wedding, the community collected for?
Is the pressure of having to shop new dresses and matching shoes more normal than not having to shop at all?

Perhaps both are not normal, and this is the message Hashem wants us to get. Find a new normal, and find a normal normal. Because the normal that you think was normal was not normal either.

amother

Firebrick

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 11:02 pm

amother [ cornflower ] wrote:

I'm not so sure the life before this was so normal either.
Parents rushing out early morning, working hard, some till late hours.
The school system, cooping up the kids inside for 8-9 hours a day.
And for frum life:
The frantic shopping before a new season.
The socializing in shul.
The extravagant simchas that most can't afford.
A messed up school system with vaads in control.

The only thing not normal right now is the people getting sick or the people passing away R"L.

Is there whole family being together less normal than the family never getting to see one another only on weekends.
Is getting married in the backyard less normal than the 100k wedding, the community collected for?
Is the pressure of having to shop new dresses and matching shoes more normal than not having to shop at all?

Perhaps both are not normal, and this is the message Hashem wants us to get. Find a new normal, and find a normal normal. Because the normal that you think was normal was not normal either.

amother

Aquamarine

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 11:03 pm

amother [ cornflower ] wrote:

amother

Silver

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 11:04 pm

amother [ cornflower ] wrote:

Love this.

Laiya

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 11:10 pm

To answer the question, Can this last forever? I don't think so. At worst, this virus will be around until there's a safe, effective vaccine. One vaccine has already started human trials which takes a year, and there are many other groups working on different vaccines as well. Seems unlikely to me that none of them will prove safe and effective.

amother

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 11:11 pm

amother [ cornflower ] wrote:

Thank you for this beautiful post. You make incredibly good points.
No, our "normal" or all the things we needed or thought we needed, was not healthy. Hashem is forcing us to refocus and reevaluate.
The deaths are really shaking me up though Sad

amother

Mauve

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 11:35 pm

Laiya wrote:

I hope we do better than that. We tolerate (without blinking) 60,000 deaths annually due to the flu, because we have a vaccine.

Effective treatment PLUS vaccine sounds much better to me.

amother

Amber

Thu, Apr 02 2020, 11:36 pm

amother [ cornflower ] wrote:

Yes a million times over!!

amother

Royalblue

Fri, Apr 03 2020, 12:46 am

Amother cornflower: it's interesting. This week I noticed how much calmer my first-grade daughter looks, calmer than I've seen her in a loonng time. She's a different person, really. She loves school but she was there for 8-9 hrs a day and looking back - that's insane! These kids are so young. It doesn't even make sense if you think about it.

amother

Cobalt

Fri, Apr 03 2020, 1:03 am

amother [ cornflower ] wrote:

So with you on that!
My kids love going to sleep a tiny bit later, waking up at a normal hour, being home in a calm relaxed setting. They get to eat normal food 3x a day and dont need 7 snacks a day just to get through the day. They daven and learn beautifully and still have time for drawing, arts and crafts, lego, helping for pesach, etc.
I cant imagine going back to my teens out the door by 7 AM. It's just not normal.