There is a strange round of articles that have appeared in the online mainstream media. It may be occurring in the televised mainstream media, but I don't watch it so I don't know. The strangeness is that of calling the lockdown of society the "new normal".
When doing a quick web search, I found articles that mostly come from the UK in the first page. One from Canada where I live. There was one from the Atlantic, but that was a report from and about Hong Kong. The Hill does have an article on page 2 of the search with "new normal" in the post itself, not the title. I found about 6 mainstream articles. There are more from less popular media sources though.
So what is this "new normal"
The Guardian
Our new normal: why so many of us feel unprepared for lockdown life
This article writes about the way we were living pre-lockdown, and how things are now with isolation, long queues to get into stores, distancing and washing hands when we return home. The current condition has growing death counts, collapsing economies and a "sundering of all natural intimacy with wider family and friends." The article goes on to relate the current condition to wars and lack of food, lack of money, etc. The article ends with "I remember that people are suffering, and normal has gone away."
But there were deaths every year from the flu. About 17,000 per year in the UK according to official 'public health' numbers in the past 5 years. The difference is that the mainstream media wasn't plastering death counts from the flu every day to affect the consciousness of people.
The article talks about what people can do to cope with the "new normal". It's more positive on keeping active and build routines into your life, but also the *"very, very deeply aware of the level of trauma and the level of loss." People are spending more time together, and that may not be what many like. So do stuff to keep you busy to avoid anxiety and depression due to the loss of what was before. Some places in Canada, or the whole country, may be in lockdown until summer arrives.
This article is decent. It tries to help people accept the current condition and live differently.
Fourth, local, state and federal governments will need to invest in resources for a coordinated response plan to monitor COVID-19. This plan must be nimble to identify and isolate localized resurgence of new infections that will arise when we resume work, school and social activities and, importantly, travel. Contact tracing will be important to a renewed strategy of COVID-19 containment. This response plan must be able to re-instate as well as lift layers of restriction. If we cannot detect and isolate cases in a coordinated manner through the cooperation of local, state and federal governments, then we cannot prevent the return of the outbreak.
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic thus far has been likened to putting an airplane together while flying it. As our plane spirals out of control, we are scrambling to read a complicated and incomplete instruction manual. As a nation, we must work to marshal protective resources, public health monitoring, and strong scientific and political leadership as we exit the safety of lockdown in order to find our new normal.
This one is written by a virologist, and is the most interesting so far. The author is calling for continued monitoring by governments, after the lockdown is lifted, and the need to reinstate the lockdown or layers of it. I find the analogy to putting a plane together while flying it is ridiculous. It seems like a bad analogy chosen to invoke chaos imagery of a dire situation where people are flying in an incomplete airplane and likely to die.
The ending speaks of exiting the lockdown which provides us with "safety", because without it we aren't safe, apparently. And then comes the "new normal" after we exist the lockdown. This suggests that the post-lockdown world will be a "new normal", different from the normalcy of the pre-lockdown way of life. It's not talking about the "new normal" as the lockdown period, but after it.
The "new normal" seems as she would like it, seems to setup a process of recurring testing and potential lockdown if corona comes back (which it likely will since we don't have heard immunity). The author was also putting her hopes for herd immunity on a currently non-existent unicorn of a COVID-19 vaccine.
The issues was presented as vaccines and anti-virals are out only hope, there are no actual treatments, like say chloroquine + zinc, vitamin C, or another new one of macrolide + 3cg. Those don't seem to exist in order to get people to live right now and build natural her immunity. It's all about a vaccine savior.
Regarding the title of this post, most of the articles don't suggest a normalizing of the isolation, lockdowns, and testing, except the one above. There might be more. But this last one was written by an "expert", a virologist. These types of recommendations are going to be how the consensus moves forward to expect governments to act, at least that's what I see. I think this indicates a significant degree of likelihood of recurring testing, lockdowns and a denial of non-vaccine remedies to promote the savior of vaccines, will be where we go. What do you think?