It's just a good idea to keep some of the measures permanently, and never need to be over.
There is more at stake than merely convenience and comfort. For example the Chinese have always been more prone to wear masks in public to protect against health hazards, and for the most part Westerners scoff or even frown at this. And part of it is more than cultural merely in the sense of aesthetics. China has a culture that places much more of a premium on security and stability than the USA does, and the personal ethic of a Western democracy is that one needs to allow certain amounts of freedom and danger in order to foster diversity of thought, as compared with a more closed and protected society where chaos is viewed as dangerous. The mask in public is part and parcel of this divide, and it is more than just a medical issue when discussing the nature of how Americans
need to comport themselves in order to keep their cultural values in the fore of their consciousness. Mistrust of others is more or less antithetical to the democratic and capitalist positions, and damaging to their strengths.
Do I really need people to be adjacent to me in line at the grocery store?
Maybe not.
Shaking hands with strangers should probably go away forever.
You've got to be careful with this one. People literally need lots of exposure to virulence and 'danger.' I used to joke to my wife that our son was too clean, and that we should just put him in a mud puddle on principle to get some more germs into his system. And with covid keeping people apart, especially during the lives of young people, this is no joke. And it seems to be the common consensus now that, for instance, avoiding allergens in babies causes them long-term problems in the form of allergies, so that now advice to parents includes the mandate to carefully and slowly introduce allergens as early as reasonably possible. You definitely
do not want to change your way of life in order to avoid the exchange of germs. If you don't like shaking hands that's fine, but I would recommend maybe playing a little Red Rover to make up for
Other measures like distance learning might be important to eliminate for young children but actually beneficial to keep in higher learning.
Maybe, maybe not. Online courses and remote teaching definitely have possibilities and open up avenues, but the in-person leaning experience is more than just receiving information.
I'd like to see businesses maintain the option for remote work for anyone who wants it. I'd like to see meat processing plants regulated to create better health for their workers who are currently all on top of each other.
I also hope that remote work remains an industry standard
in some contexts, but I fear it may also exacerbate or accelerate the outsourcing of labor. But agreed about unhealthy environments needing a reboot. This should have happened massively last summer, and I view it as a disappointment that it didn't.
Now, perhaps you're thinking more about government capacity limitations and other restrictions, rather than government recommendations? I think that's debatable, but it involves having a permanently flattened curve rather than exponential spread, instead of yo-yoing from swampy peak to manageable background.
I'm talking more about the ethical position of insisting that people radically alter their lives to protect a minority. I already think something along these lines when it comes to tolerated foods in schools; namely that the protection of a small minority places stringent restrictions on the majority in order to cater to them. In the case of a society-wide restriction there is a certain limit beyond which I think it actually is asking too much, and in fact it may not even be ethical to ask. What that limit is is a question, but I am not in doubt that there is a limit.
