Juno News - How long will it take to return to normal？

00:00:00.000 I think there's a whole lot of people out there who are vastly underestimating just how long it

00:00:11.940 is going to take for us to recover from the very profound things that we have done to our society

00:00:17.760 on the economic front, on the social, cultural front, on the psychological front,

00:00:22.820 on the health front. When it comes to all the very big things we have done in the past 14 months

00:00:29.140 and counting when it comes to battling the pandemic, there's a whole lot of people out there

00:00:33.820 who are telling themselves, who are really hoping, who are praying that all of a sudden,

00:00:38.280 very soon, just around the corner, any moment now, snap of the finger, things are going to change,

00:00:43.040 they're going to go back to the way they were before, just like that, because the virus is

00:00:48.320 suddenly eradicated, or I don't know, because everybody's suddenly vaccinated, and there you go,

00:00:52.720 let's party, no more restrictions, nobody's wearing masks anymore. Now, I wish that was the case, I

00:00:58.180 really do, but I really don't think it will be, and I was reminded of that. I was reading a book

00:01:03.360 recently that had nothing to do with the coronavirus that was on the World War II era and recovery from

00:01:08.460 the World War II situation, and there was a line that said, British food rationing, food rationing

00:01:15.920 in the United Kingdom did not end until 1954. 1954 is nine years after, almost a decade after the war

00:01:24.780 ended, and yet they had that. They had food rationing in place for nine years after, and then they did

00:01:31.560 not end the ban on imports on luxury goods from places like the American markets until 1959, all

00:01:39.200 because of the reverberations that happened from the war. So you realize the profound cultural effects

00:01:43.980 that that big schism on society had for many years to come. I know we kind of, I know many people

00:01:49.860 have joked about the fact that their British parents or their British grandparents who were

00:01:53.920 around during the late 1930s, the 1940s, how they have this attitude where they have to finish every

00:02:00.120 single morsel of food on their plate, you know, and they would have that attitude when they'd go out

00:02:04.380 for dinner at like an Eastside Mario's in the year 2005 or what have you, where they give you, you know,

00:02:08.500 a plentiful plate of food, and you got to finish every single bite because it was just ingrained in them

00:02:13.360 as kids that food was so scarce and you can't waste a single morsel and so forth. Now, of course,

00:02:18.020 one should always finish your dinner wherever you are, whoever's on the plate, but, you know, basic

00:02:21.680 idea, you didn't have to do that in 2005 because of food rationing, but yet that mentality still stuck

00:02:28.900 with people for decades, and it took later generations, of course, to shake off that mindset,

00:02:35.380 those sort of attitudes that permeate. We're going to have attitudes like that, that permeate moving

00:02:41.700 forward. We're going to have people who, you know, are they going to be able to shake hands

00:02:46.240 for years to come? Someone outstretches a hand for a handshake, and what does that mean? Do you recoil

00:02:53.340 from that just automatically because of the psychology of what's happened this past year?

00:02:58.180 I don't know. That's one example of one of those things that could be around for so long in terms

00:03:02.320 of the cultural, psychological stuff. When it comes to the economic stuff, again, Britain having food

00:03:07.340 rationing for years, years, almost a decade after the war ended, what sort of things like that

00:03:13.320 are we going to have in place? It's obviously not apples to apples comparing what happened during

00:03:18.180 the war to what's going on during the pandemic, but schisms, changes, things that sort of permanently

00:03:24.000 get into the system, and it's hard to get them out. I think we're kidding ourselves that that stuff is

00:03:29.700 just going to be instantly lifted, and these are things we're going to have to talk about more.

00:03:34.520 They're things we're going to have to prepare more for when it comes to actually making forward

00:03:39.560 momentum and progress in the months and the years ahead.

Juno News - April 23, 2021