28
votes
What pandemic-related norms would you like to see remain once the current COVID-19 crisis is "over"?
I know that "over" is a nebulous concept as it relates to COVID-19, but I'm using that more as a way of prompting long-term thinking rather than identifying any actual endpoint to the pandemic.
The question could also be phrased: what changes did COVID-19 bring about that you hope will stick around in the years to come?
Sick people wearing masks. Common in Asia, people think you're a weirdo in the US, but probably not anymore
Remote flexibility in the workplace. I actually am not a big fan of all remote, I think some things are just much easier in person, and I also like free food, but I think getting some amount of remote work days a year would be great for "workcations" or just seeing family.
In public policy, I hope this will make the US public policy less opposed to heavy spending for social safety nets - the unemployment increase in CARES was massive and I think it had a huge positive effect and is part of the reason the economy is not nearly as bad as predicted.
I've made the decision to do so. I don't care if I look weird. I hope it does become normalized so I don't though.
Same! It feels really strange thinking back to pre-pandemic social norms...it feels like we were so silly and thoughtless or just stubborn. A mask when sick feels like common sense.
I'm in for this as well, and a number of the people I've spoken to casually have mentioned they feel strongly towards it too. Can only be a good thing :)
Yes, but hopefully not to the point it's seen as an acceptable alternative to paid sick leave.
Yeah. As far as concerns me: My goal would be to work from home if I'm sick (i.e. infectious disease but still capable of work) and do my daily shopping with a mask. If I'm too sick for work, of course I won't work. But I find the notion stupid of going into work with the flu just because you can tolerate it, particularly if you can work from home.
This is a behavior that I hope more people have had reenforced because of covid-19. Just because you feel ok doesn't mean you're not potentially infectious. If someone in your house is sick, maybe wear a mask as a courtesy to others.
I really dislike the cold. I'd love a fully remote position and live somewhere warm at least during the winter months. For me winter days are pretty much over before they start. I get tired early, I don't like to leave the house, etc. skipping winter altogether is one of my goals for the coming years (I am finishing my masters in a few months)
I am emphatically with you there, I would absolutely love to follow the warm weather year round. It's something I've been thinking about for a while, and one of the things it's really made me consider is the difference between "working from home" and working in a way that's completely geographically untethered.
If you'd asked me pre-pandemic I would have said that everyone should be given the opportunity* to work 100% remote, and that forcing people to come into the office was archaic and wasteful. After a year or so of trying out an extreme experiment in that world I've gained a little more nuance, although my core thinking is the same.
Communication has bogged down a bit, and the basic social relationships that smooth things over have come a little harder - trust and rapport take more time and effort, and while I haven't seen any major misunderstandings, it does seem that people are a bit more distant. Obviously there's more than just remote work going on here, so it's impossible to judge that alone, but there have been more than a few times that I've wished we could just hash something out sitting at the same monitor for an hour, or with a whiteboard, or even just go for a pint and get a bit more comfortable with the people I'm working with every day.
That said, I still find offices noisy and distracting and broadly uncomfortable. They don't do good things for either my physical or mental wellbeing, and the benefits of being at home are literally life changing: I eat so much better by being steps from my own kitchen, I rest better knowing that I will broadly be in control of each day's interactions with people, I exercise more because it becomes a natural part of my schedule, I get chores done little-by-little because I can take a ten minute screen break and put away the laundry, I get more independent work done with fewer distractions, and then on top of all that I gain back 60-90 minutes of the day every day and I don't have to spend it crammed into an uncomfortable metal tube.
So, the standard 5 days per week, 40+ hours away from home, daily commute lifestyle is an absolute no-go, but I do see more value than I'd expected to in at least a bit of real world face time. The obvious solution is a couple of days per week in the office, or maybe 6-8 per month arranged however is most appropriate to one's working patterns. It seems like the best of both worlds.
The problem is that then steps on a lot of the real, serious, society-changing benefits of remote work. There's still a physical tether between the workers and the workspace; it might be a longer tether than in the 9-5 Mon-Fri world, which is a definite positive, but it's still standing in the way. No significant redistribution of population, housing, and wealth that had previously been concentrating in ever-more unaffordable cities to the detriment of both their own residents and the increasingly impoverished residents of everywhere else. Less smoothing and reduction of load on overcrowded transport infrastructure. No normalisation of indefinite travel or nomadic lifestyle. No internationally distributed teams. None of the true freedom that was, briefly, close enough to grasp.
I don't have a punchy conclusion to this. I do still think that full time, obligatory office work is absolutely counterproductive and frankly kind of cruel. To tie this ramble back to the point, I wholeheartedly hope that the norm of remote working is something we retain now that we've shown it's possible. I still want to live the fully untethered life, but I recognise that going from 80% remote to untethered is arguably a larger step than going from fully in the office to 80% remote. Not impossible, or even implausible, but something that'll take work to get right.
* I do mean the opportunity to work remotely, not the obligation. I recognise that the comfort and practicality of doing so varies hugely from one person to the next, both in preference and in living situation.
Something interesting to note is that while mask-wearing for sick people is heavily normalized in Asian countries, their cold and flu rates remain the same as countries that do not have this social pressure to wear masks.
I wonder if that's a result of higher pop. density?
Hear me now I will never shake a hand again.
I hear you, and I totally get that some people would have this perspective.
At the same time, me personally, I miss shaking people's hand, and look forward to being able to do so again safely. Of course, if someone doesn't want to shake my hand, I will respect that without question. But I think there's something about making that physical connection. Something positive, something friendly, something meaningful. I'm not sure what it is.
I really, really, really hope telehealth is here to stay. Doc phones in, looks at infection, writes scrip. No need to enter a waiting room with other sick people while sick. It lowers the barrier for therapy, while not a full replacement for in-person, it certainly is better than nothing.
Good restaurants using online ordering and delivery.
People taking more walks in their neighborhood.
The overall decreased crime rates. Hope that murder spike is an anomaly and can be rectified with proper social safety nets.
Curbside pickup. It saves so much time.
More parents raising and playing with their children.
I have a roommate who has bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia. Prior to Covid they had to drive 2x a week 2 hours away to receive their medication. Unbeknown to me, when their car broke down, they were unable to make their appointments. By the time they had their car up running again they had reached the point that they didn't think they needed their medication anymore. This began the most terrifying seven months I had experienced in decades. During a manic hallucinatory episode I finally convinced them to get committed, but due to Covid no one would take them. They did however give them a major sedative and scheduled a video session for the following day. They now get to go to the local pharmacy (they can walk if they need to) to pick up their medications and check in through telehealth weekly. IT SHOULD HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY. I hope that after this is all over they can continue. My roommate, even medicated will never live a normal life, but they try really hard to stay above water and this pandemic has proven, to me at least, that telehealth services can work.
Sadly much of this cannot simply be fixed with just telehealth. Many medications are scheduled in a way that access is limited despite practically no one abusing these medications. Drug scheduling needs a serious overhaul, and we need to seriously reconsider how to deliver drugs to people with chronic conditions. Monthly scripts that require hoops to jump through make traveling and lost medication much more difficult to deal with. Sometimes pharmacies don't stock particular meds because of the headache, leading to people having to travel further to get them. Some medications cannot be sent via mail, period, which means people have to commute to get medication. Some substances have been completely banned from scientific research for decades, halting important progress for serious mental illnesses like PTSD and more common chronic illnesses like depression.
The war on drugs failed and we're facing an opioid addiction crises. It's time to seriously rethink policy.
You bring up a lot of good points. I agree that telehealth should not replace the current model, but it should be more widely integrated. In my anecdote telehealth absolutely does work. When this is all over, I think he should still be required to check in face to face semi-regularly but not twice weekly in order to receive his meds. Now that he doesn't have to be face to face 2x a week, he's been able to increase his work hours to full time which has upped his self esteem and made him feel more secure in the world.
Maybe not just telehealth, but telehealth certainly helps tremendously. Almost all other medication problems can be resolved by scrips by mail and dismantling health insurance.
Many drugs are precribed as follows: "hmmm, what are your symptoms and vitals? Ok, here's a scrip, call me if you have any problems." Maybe some blood tests if there is some risks.
IMO all drugs should be 100% legal/decriminalized for the reasons you mentioned. Drug addition is a medical problem, not a criminal one.
The lack of ability to order food via website drives me a bit insane. Instead it's, "use our app!"
Yea, apps are a nuisance. Many use cases for them can just be replaced with good websites.
Luckily all the services I use are accessible via a normal website.
My phone just straight up broke during the pandemic, in retrospect I should've just gotten a cellphone but ordering out became such a chore. You literally can't do ANYTHING with a computer. This is THIRTY YEARS after the web was made! Get with the times!
Generally, yes (although the plural of ancedote is not data).
A lot of posts about how parents don't know what to do with their kids all day without daycare.
Incidentally, divorces are confirmed to be sky-high, likely for similar reasons. Easier to tolerate a bad marriage when you can spend most of your waking hours away from them.
I'd like to caveat the potential for other reasons here: The pandemic has generally been quite stressful. Finances are a big reason for divorces, and I don't expect that to change here. Someone losing their job can be enough of a disruptive event to send your finances down the drain and cause a lot of stress. Similarly, I can imagine a lot of people not dealing well with the isolation. Some people presumably just need more than one social contact after X amount of time. That stress could also cause relationships to fail.
Of course, there are also cases as you described. But just because a relationship failed during covid, doesn't mean it was a bad relationship to begin with.
Indeed. Not married here but I did spend Valentine's day with my ex. We have a fantastic relationship but we didn't live together when the pandemic hit and the lockdown and her family made things too stressful to deal with.
So just to emphasize:
Children's videos are often so popular because parents find them an easy way to get their child to stay put and entertained. (See the term digital babysitter). However, it is worth noting that this is more often used by poor parents who can't afford to spend time raising their children because they have to work to pay all the bills instead of just having one parent assume responsibility. (Although these people shouldn't have children or, presumably far more often, be blocked from accessing affordable contraceptives or abortions.)
A lot of parents of children I know often do this and personally, as someone whose parents also did this (albeit organized children and baby's spaces weren't really a thing ca me being a toddler and in my case it did pay off with me learning English and often watching educational content, which is a good form of screentime), I think it's one of the main reasons I disliked parenting so unilaterally. (I still dislike parenting, but I know that some people have good experiences parenting, enjoy it and actively want it.) I always felt parenting was sinking your time and money into feeding, clothing and giving toys and other entertainment to your child because that's what my parents often did. In my case it fortunately paid off with me learning English and often watching educational content, which is a good form of screentime but that was me in 2008-era internet which basically lacks proper children's spaces outside browser games and non-English spaces were far behind (well, except for the Japanese) but things just don't happen like that anymore.
It's probably a more complex issue, but I feel like this is a problem more parental leave would solve.
Maybe, but a lot of the "educational" channels on Youtube spread misinformation and/or have a political agenda. 90% of the time the kid would be better off reading a book (unless it's really young) or even watching TV, in my opinion. I don't think there are a lot of pros with "digital babysitting"...
Maybe you're looking in the wrong places on YouTube? There's a wealth of content that just doesn't exist on other mediums.
A well-curated youtube playlist can help teach your kid about stuff they otherwise wouldn't be exposed to before high school or college.
Books are fantastic, especially for entertainment. But for learning they kinda suck, especially for younger kids.
In-person, interactive learning is the best. Video comes in quite nicely, presuming that it's not just consumed passively. And that's really the kicker.
PBS has a ton of fantastic educational shows. Your kid won't learn a damn thing if they're sat in front of it without any additional interaction besides seeing it on the screen.
Mass produced, reusable face masks. My dad has horrible allergies, and I introduced him to the Gill Mask. I want stuff like this for fire season and when Santa Ana winds strike. I want stuff like this mask to help bring down production of disposable masks.
Normalized face mask wearing for people, even if you aren't sick. I'll do it if I have even just a cold after this just because I know where to get them, and the humidity helps me breathe, like if I cover my face when I'm sick. I'll definitely do it for the conditions I mentioned above.
Those Gill Mask filters are really cheap compared to N95 disposable mask.
The best part is that you don't need their filters. It was designed to cut up a surgical mask to fit with a gasket that's included with the mask. The idea was to make a single surgical mask last six times longer.
They're also insanely bulky for most people to just be walking around town with. If I'm trying to avoid allergies or inhaling ash from a far-off forest fire, I don't necessarily need something that huge with expensive cartridges. A cloth mask, or just something I can cut up a surgical mask for, would do the job just as well for my application.
As said by @suspended, handshakes being less important is cool by me. While hugs are valuable for being wholesome and representative of friendship and cozyness, handshakes are a formality primarily for employers.
I also think the normalization of being at home and doing most communication online instead of face-to-face could be quite good for introverted people, even if it definitely isn't meant to be the default way of social interaction.
Especially for employment. Maybe I'm an anomaly, but I don't want to socialize with any of my coworkers any more than strictly necessary to get a paycheck.
One of the greatest silver linings of lockdown is that nobody can swing by my desk anymore.
I've taken up my job during lockdown. Lemme tell you, it's weird. I have a hands-off boss. I have not met my colleagues. Maybe it works on a regular basis, as long as you still have normal ways of getting to know them, but as is I feel quite disconnected from them.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want them swinging by my desk, I don't want to have an out-of-work relationship with all of them. But I am starting to see the goal of "team-building exercises", as they call it. It just makes communicating to your colleagues a lot easier if they aren't pretty much strangers.
Good communication requires trust, and while trust can be built via video chat and Slack, it's slower. In person interactions are latency-free, high-bandwidth (full body language), and have inherent common context (you're in the same physical space).
I find it's way easier and faster to develop good communication in person, and then transition to remote work. I also started my current job during lockdown, and I know that my work relationships have suffered for it.
I'm also different in that I don't mind people dropping by my desk. I'm used to working in an open office environment with other developers. I desperately miss being able to swing my chair around and asking "does this code look right to you?".
Specifically, trust not in the sense of "I know he's not going to murder me in a dark alley" but also "I know that this way of expressing myself will be understood".
Ohh, I'm lucky to have my partner's desk right by mine. We've got similar jobs so we help each other out. We'll borrow each other as rubber duckies throughout the day. So I'm good there, but I certainly see the reason.
All told though, I like working remotely. A lot.
I've also enjoyed some aspects of working from home, it has allowed me to be way more flexible with how my schedule works, do random home chores, etc. However there are some parts of "the office" tha I like, and I am deeply angry at being deprived of some of the aspects of working on-location.
The job I have right now is one of the few that I went actively hunting for. All of my previous jobs where either just done because I needed money and they where the first to hire me, or because an opportunity came up and I said "sure why not".
After the project I was working on for 2yrs was cancelled I was severely disillusioned with my previous job and so sat down and really thought about "what do I want out of a job besides money?". Among other things, one of the reasons that came to the top was the opportunity to mentor and teach. I do not have kids, but I find that when I interact with other people's kids that's one of the most enjoyable things in the world is to teach someone something new or expand their understanding of the world. My current job is at a major US university, and interacting with students in a mentoring type atmosphere was a slam-dunk to me.
So I started this job 1 week after our lockdown started and have never set foot in our offices. I saw them through a window once a few months ago. I've met my small group of coworkers in person exactly 3 times, and our student interns never. And now I've spent almost a year only interacting with students remotely a few times a week. All while they are stressed and trying to find their way through a crazy pandemic world where travel and in-person teaching practices change constantly. I took this job to try and make a very specific difference in the world, and then the ability to do it the best of my ability was taken from me. Now I have to settle for "good enough". And I hate it because there's nothing I can really do about it except continue to wait.
Have you considered ways in which you can have a conversation with your team members to better know them, to better understand which communication methods work for them, and whatever other information you would like to work better with them?
I make a habit of asking people on the first meeting I have with them about what kinds of communication they like - do they prefer email, phone, etc. I also always ask people how to pronounce their name whether it's seemingly obvious or not.
While this may seem like above and beyond behavior from a very people oriented person, I can guarantee you that this used to be something that I struggled with and had to learn over time. While 'team-building' exercises are a great way to focus on this specifically, there's no reason this cannot happen organically with a few small nudges.
We are usually very physical on our public interactions in Brazil. Kissing and hugging. I'm looking forward for this custom to be abandoned.
Same in Europe, daily, even between colleagues who do not necessarily like each other! It's an unhealthy habit at best, great for spreading cold and flu as well as COVID-19. I'd like to see both (when appropriate) replaced by hugs where body parts don't touch, or nods or that elbow thing.
Yeah. I'm okay with nodding, speaking, or waving hands at a distance.
I hope that companies will remain more open to remote work, since it's a disability accommodation for me, but I'm a bit worried they won't.
Before the pandemic, many companies argued against allowing disabled people to work from home saying it'd be an undue burden. Of course, the fact that so many were able to switch all of their employees to remote work on short notice indicates this was a lie. So while it might be harder for them to argue that in the future, I can still see it happening. "Sure, we did that during the pandemic, but now that's over and everyone is back in the office, it isn't feasible to include remote workers in meetings."
So I'm a little... Jaded, I guess, seeing so many people suddenly have the options I didn't have when first looking for jobs. I'd love it if my options were a little less limited next time I'm looking for a job, but I can't hold my breath.
What about having this (it's not a current in-pandemic norm, but an idea): video conference tech (and, why not, Internet access in general, too) as public utility, built and maintained for the common good of the community, city, province, country, humanity.