**1 in 6 UK adults believe life will never return to ‘normal’, says ONS**
Around one in six adults in Britain believe that life will never return to what it was pre-pandemic, according to a new survey by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
The results mark the highest proportion to share this view since the start of the pandemic.
The ONS opinions and lifestyle survey, conducted between 18 and 28 November, found that 16% of adults believed that life will never return to normal. This compares to 11% between 20 and 31 October.
Surprised it’s not a lot higher. No matter what side of the fence you are on with this pandemic it is clear social norms are going to change long term whether they are for better or worse.
Define “normal”.
Once upon a time we got very sick because we had not quite grasped the concept of soap and hand washing. So people suddenly had to start washing their hands. And illness reduced. To us this is normal now.
This time we got very sick because we had not grasped the concept of airborne transmission and clean air/ventilation. We can be stubborn about it or we can learn and implement ways to reduce transmission. Design our buildings with the need for fresh air in mind, mandate air filters etc. Set new standards going forward.
Things change all the time, we adapt. Then it becomes the new normal. Future generations will not think twice about the things we now struggle to accept. They will have their own struggles and so on.
How can it?
Every day we stray further from “normal” because we enter the future.
Whether it be technology or a pandemic, each day something evolves.
The difference here with a pandemic is the speed in which it happens.
Since we opened up in the summer my life has been ‘normal’ for the most part. I go to pubs, served at the bar, I go to the football with 60,000 other people. I go into shops, into the office and so on. All normal.
Main thing is international travel and masks on the tube still. I think both of those will go back to normal at some point too.
The tipping point of WFH being widely accepted (or at least known as successful even if not desirable to all stakeholders) was going to happen. This event just brought it forward.
It rather depends on both Covid itself and public health responses.
Earlier pandemics tend to end eventually (keyword: eventually) when they either burn out, get defeated by vaccines or mutate into something less harmful.
Spanish flu took a good two or three years. Several of the plagues were around for many years. Some seemed to resurface every decade. Smallpox was endemic for centuries in Eurasia and virtually depopulated the Americas when it arrived there.
We’ve got a much better understanding of medicine and fantastic vaccines now – but to counterbalance that a much larger world population for it to mutate in and routine international air travel to spread variants around. What impact the interaction of those factors will have on the duration is unknown.
One depressing thought though: we unconsciously assume that the last several decades of being largely free of pandemics is the norm. From a historical perspective however they’re very much the exception not the rule unfortunately.
I wonder if it’s the same 1 in 6 that exclaim “Oh we’re never going to get there”, when stuck in a traffic jam?
The whole point of this survey was to determine the general mood of the nation – in particular to determine whether people are becoming more or less confident/negative about the future.
People are currently slightly more negative than they were the previous month. That’s it. Hardly an earth shattering revelation is it?
That seems very low.
A lot of the things we’ve changed in the last 2 years were coming anyway.
WFH was coming, the pandemic just sped it up.
Another pandemic was warned about for years.
​
The world is constantly changing, you can’t go backwards.
Focus on moving forwards with your life, start where you are and look ahead.
Wait until till they get put in the *ReesMogg Workhouses Of Joy* ^^TM.
5/6 people are lying to themselves
COVID isn’t going anywhere, they will probably have to keep inoculating people for years to come
It’s not necessarily a bad thing.. it’s just.. how we will have to respond to this event occuring
Can we keep the whole mask thing when ill please? I’d feel infinitely better if we behaved like Asian countries when it comes to going out in public whilst ill. In the socially-polite way, not the mandate way.
Depends what you mean by normal i guess ? Definitely wash my hands more often.
More social activities are outdoor which isn’t a bad thing well unless your a pub land lord we still go to the pub just less often.
Masks going unless I’m sick and can’t avoid going out would be nice right enough.
Yep I’d say that accurate, honestly surprised it’s not 2/6 or even more.
It won’t now the state are locking in this hysteria/need to be seen to be doing something/abusive cycle
Pre COVID you’d see far east Asians in the uk wearing masks as it was normalised due to SARS out there.
I doubt we ever go back to seeing a masked person as a weird novelty like it was in February 2020
Yep. The hysteria is now entrenched. The govt won’t let this power go either. No going back now.
The virus that is Boris Johnson all but guarantees that. We also have the pandemic.
I’d like a return to normal as long as WFH remains.
For me not much changed since the pandemic, I just stay at home and game lol
I suspect companies will continue to use ‘covid’ as an excuse for many years to come. When pubs and restaurants were reopening, the menus were restricted down to a few things. Many of the things removed have never returned, they just slimmed the menu down.
Call centers are apparently short staffed, due to covid. Even though pretty much everyone is now back at work.
For many years, I think it’s going to be ‘blame covid’ for xyz.
As for wearing face masks, I really don’t mind that. Been doing it for a year and a half, hasn’t done anything bad to me as far as I can tell.
People adapt and will define a new normal, they’ve already coined the phrase. Saying this, it’s still far far too unbalanced and beyond repair climate wise. No meaningful change is possible when only a wealthy elite can enjoy a life of comfort and good health.
It will the instant we demand it. My life is almost normal right now, because I will it so.
Even worse. Probably heading for a society collapse.
I think the yearning for ‘normal’ is holding us back. Covid is here to stay and the focus should be on adaptation and management rather than a race to go back to what life was in 2019.
Well this is depressing.
One in six UK adults are intelligent enough to realise that we aren’t going back to normal.
Always assumed I was going to work in an office 9-5 l, 5 days a week my whole life. Now it seems extremely unlikely! Win!
The genie is out of the bottle for vaccine passports and draconian restrictions for health reasons, give a government an inch they will take a mile.
A lot of daily life will eventually resemble “normality”, but this is probably like 9/11 & 7/7 and hyper securitization, where some aspects of our lives will be changed permanently. Outside of some vocal minority groups, we now take it as a given that certain civil liberties are to remain curtailed in the name of anti-terrorism. A similar impact will occur because of covid.
Unfortunately what many people don’t realise is how fucked the NHS is right now.
Due to my health conditions I have been in and out of hospital for the past decade.
I have never known it this bad.
I had a colonoscopy 6 weeks ago under the GP Urgent Cancer referral. They saw me with 7 days and took 8 biopsies during the colonoscopy.
Since then I have had to go to A&E twice.
I have yet to here from the colonoscopy, I have to to even see my consultant.
My daughter had some serious health issues about 3 months. The GP wanted her to take some bloods.
The next day he called and asked to see her.
When we got there he told us the results, told us that he had spoke to pediatrics for advise.
He prescribed medicine and said that she had been referred to pediatrics as they wanted to do a follow up.
We heard nothing for months and then a few days ago, maybe a week we got a letter saying that she is now on the waiting list to see pediatrics…
For years the nurses and doctors kept telling everyone that they were stretch to the limit after a decade of cuts but nobody listened.
Now the Pandemic has pushed the NHS over the edge.
I have seen many posts from people saying fuck the Pandemic, it’s a boomer disease so they don’t care.
Well if you are one of them your a Fucking Idiot.
Due to hospitals being swamped with covid-19 patients it means other services are going by the way side.
I only hope you don’t need the NHS
This will end when the people say enough is enough. Until then the dystopia continues.
I feel this way but largely because of the cracks that have been revealed in our society. I am so depressed by the ugliness of so many peoples attitudes to their fellow citizens. It was already there with Brexit and the divisions that caused but has been exacerbated with the gulf further widening between young and old, rich and poor, disenfranchised or marginalised and mainstream. The analogy of us all being at sea in a storm but not all in the same boat seems apt. I thought that we were slowly inching forward, becoming a better more tolerant society but the trauma of coping with Covid has knocked a huge chunk off our emotional capacity to care. We have empathy fatigue and that is having a knock on effect outside of the actual event. I theorise it like society being knocked a few notches down Maslow’s triangle but perhaps someone has a better theoretical model?
Well, i have started adding a PCR test budget to my regular expenses list so i do believe that as well sadly.
The UK has one of the most compliant population of nodding dogs on the planet. I don’t doubt it.
Unfortunately far to many people now have to always go for the most extreme option.
Thr answer isn’t Lock down or disregard everything.
We could of handled the Pandemic quite well if we could stop seeing everything as an absolute and competition.
The answer isn’t locking down but it also isn’t fuck everything, it’s always been somewhere in the middle and you then slowly swing a little to either side depending on the situation at that moment.
We royally fucked this up… Not just in the UK, its happened in many places.
We as a species have such a long way to go….
We’re in the best case scenario we could ever imagine being in and the government as well as many people still want major restrictions, so it’s a totally reasonable prediction that we will never return to normal.
There will always be covid, always be variants so will we always have restrictions?
I think we have to do this dance a few more times and eventually people need to realise that we need to just start living our lives and live with it like we have done with the flu/common cold.
It’s scary that people think endless restrictions is a genuine option, makes me wonder why people are so ok with this. I assume because many people have seriously benefitted since COVID began and want the measures in place, such as your typical blogger/journalist who wakes up at 10am to work from home every day since it began, or the NHS receptionist who can continue to be rude on the phone without having to see patients.
Even if the pandemic ends, it’s hardly going to go back to normal unless we reverse Brexit or sort out an actual good trade deal with the EU. Would be good to have the rights I’ve had for pretty much all of my life back, then it might seem to be back to normal.
Well it won’t if the people that keep arguing for more restrictions all the time (and, when we have them, keeping them for longer) win the argument.
Covid isn’t going away, but normal life can do, with a few minor adjustments (an ongoing vaccination programme, like for flu, is likely to be necessary, and more NHS capacity probably is too).
Is everyone here a dystopia-loving zoomer? Does no-one miss the 90s when everything was cheap and life was optimistic?
The old normal had some truly awful aspects which included:
1. Employers doing their utmost to prevent WFH
2. Lack of awareness of personal space when on public transport
3. Insufficient personal hygiene e.g hand washing/using tissues
4. Allowing a business to have unlimited customers; causing in store congestion
5. No self-service in certain retail establishments
6. Not being able to book medical appointments online
7. People ‘soldiering on’ and coming into work when they have coughs and sneezes.
All of these issues have been improved and I hope there is no regression.
40 comments
**1 in 6 UK adults believe life will never return to ‘normal’, says ONS**
Around one in six adults in Britain believe that life will never return to what it was pre-pandemic, according to a new survey by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
The results mark the highest proportion to share this view since the start of the pandemic.
The ONS opinions and lifestyle survey, conducted between 18 and 28 November, found that 16% of adults believed that life will never return to normal. This compares to 11% between 20 and 31 October.
Surprised it’s not a lot higher. No matter what side of the fence you are on with this pandemic it is clear social norms are going to change long term whether they are for better or worse.
Define “normal”.
Once upon a time we got very sick because we had not quite grasped the concept of soap and hand washing. So people suddenly had to start washing their hands. And illness reduced. To us this is normal now.
This time we got very sick because we had not grasped the concept of airborne transmission and clean air/ventilation. We can be stubborn about it or we can learn and implement ways to reduce transmission. Design our buildings with the need for fresh air in mind, mandate air filters etc. Set new standards going forward.
Things change all the time, we adapt. Then it becomes the new normal. Future generations will not think twice about the things we now struggle to accept. They will have their own struggles and so on.
How can it?
Every day we stray further from “normal” because we enter the future.
Whether it be technology or a pandemic, each day something evolves.
The difference here with a pandemic is the speed in which it happens.
Since we opened up in the summer my life has been ‘normal’ for the most part. I go to pubs, served at the bar, I go to the football with 60,000 other people. I go into shops, into the office and so on. All normal.
Main thing is international travel and masks on the tube still. I think both of those will go back to normal at some point too.
The tipping point of WFH being widely accepted (or at least known as successful even if not desirable to all stakeholders) was going to happen. This event just brought it forward.
It rather depends on both Covid itself and public health responses.
Earlier pandemics tend to end eventually (keyword: eventually) when they either burn out, get defeated by vaccines or mutate into something less harmful.
Spanish flu took a good two or three years. Several of the plagues were around for many years. Some seemed to resurface every decade. Smallpox was endemic for centuries in Eurasia and virtually depopulated the Americas when it arrived there.
We’ve got a much better understanding of medicine and fantastic vaccines now – but to counterbalance that a much larger world population for it to mutate in and routine international air travel to spread variants around. What impact the interaction of those factors will have on the duration is unknown.
One depressing thought though: we unconsciously assume that the last several decades of being largely free of pandemics is the norm. From a historical perspective however they’re very much the exception not the rule unfortunately.
I wonder if it’s the same 1 in 6 that exclaim “Oh we’re never going to get there”, when stuck in a traffic jam?
The whole point of this survey was to determine the general mood of the nation – in particular to determine whether people are becoming more or less confident/negative about the future.
People are currently slightly more negative than they were the previous month. That’s it. Hardly an earth shattering revelation is it?
That seems very low.
A lot of the things we’ve changed in the last 2 years were coming anyway.
WFH was coming, the pandemic just sped it up.
Another pandemic was warned about for years.
​
The world is constantly changing, you can’t go backwards.
Focus on moving forwards with your life, start where you are and look ahead.
Wait until till they get put in the *ReesMogg Workhouses Of Joy* ^^TM.
5/6 people are lying to themselves
COVID isn’t going anywhere, they will probably have to keep inoculating people for years to come
It’s not necessarily a bad thing.. it’s just.. how we will have to respond to this event occuring
Can we keep the whole mask thing when ill please? I’d feel infinitely better if we behaved like Asian countries when it comes to going out in public whilst ill. In the socially-polite way, not the mandate way.
Depends what you mean by normal i guess ? Definitely wash my hands more often.
More social activities are outdoor which isn’t a bad thing well unless your a pub land lord we still go to the pub just less often.
Masks going unless I’m sick and can’t avoid going out would be nice right enough.
Yep I’d say that accurate, honestly surprised it’s not 2/6 or even more.
It won’t now the state are locking in this hysteria/need to be seen to be doing something/abusive cycle
Pre COVID you’d see far east Asians in the uk wearing masks as it was normalised due to SARS out there.
I doubt we ever go back to seeing a masked person as a weird novelty like it was in February 2020
Yep. The hysteria is now entrenched. The govt won’t let this power go either. No going back now.
The virus that is Boris Johnson all but guarantees that. We also have the pandemic.
I’d like a return to normal as long as WFH remains.
For me not much changed since the pandemic, I just stay at home and game lol
I suspect companies will continue to use ‘covid’ as an excuse for many years to come. When pubs and restaurants were reopening, the menus were restricted down to a few things. Many of the things removed have never returned, they just slimmed the menu down.
Call centers are apparently short staffed, due to covid. Even though pretty much everyone is now back at work.
For many years, I think it’s going to be ‘blame covid’ for xyz.
As for wearing face masks, I really don’t mind that. Been doing it for a year and a half, hasn’t done anything bad to me as far as I can tell.
People adapt and will define a new normal, they’ve already coined the phrase. Saying this, it’s still far far too unbalanced and beyond repair climate wise. No meaningful change is possible when only a wealthy elite can enjoy a life of comfort and good health.
It will the instant we demand it. My life is almost normal right now, because I will it so.
Even worse. Probably heading for a society collapse.
I think the yearning for ‘normal’ is holding us back. Covid is here to stay and the focus should be on adaptation and management rather than a race to go back to what life was in 2019.
Well this is depressing.
One in six UK adults are intelligent enough to realise that we aren’t going back to normal.
Always assumed I was going to work in an office 9-5 l, 5 days a week my whole life. Now it seems extremely unlikely! Win!
The genie is out of the bottle for vaccine passports and draconian restrictions for health reasons, give a government an inch they will take a mile.
A lot of daily life will eventually resemble “normality”, but this is probably like 9/11 & 7/7 and hyper securitization, where some aspects of our lives will be changed permanently. Outside of some vocal minority groups, we now take it as a given that certain civil liberties are to remain curtailed in the name of anti-terrorism. A similar impact will occur because of covid.
Unfortunately what many people don’t realise is how fucked the NHS is right now.
Due to my health conditions I have been in and out of hospital for the past decade.
I have never known it this bad.
I had a colonoscopy 6 weeks ago under the GP Urgent Cancer referral. They saw me with 7 days and took 8 biopsies during the colonoscopy.
Since then I have had to go to A&E twice.
I have yet to here from the colonoscopy, I have to to even see my consultant.
My daughter had some serious health issues about 3 months. The GP wanted her to take some bloods.
The next day he called and asked to see her.
When we got there he told us the results, told us that he had spoke to pediatrics for advise.
He prescribed medicine and said that she had been referred to pediatrics as they wanted to do a follow up.
We heard nothing for months and then a few days ago, maybe a week we got a letter saying that she is now on the waiting list to see pediatrics…
For years the nurses and doctors kept telling everyone that they were stretch to the limit after a decade of cuts but nobody listened.
Now the Pandemic has pushed the NHS over the edge.
I have seen many posts from people saying fuck the Pandemic, it’s a boomer disease so they don’t care.
Well if you are one of them your a Fucking Idiot.
Due to hospitals being swamped with covid-19 patients it means other services are going by the way side.
I only hope you don’t need the NHS
This will end when the people say enough is enough. Until then the dystopia continues.
I feel this way but largely because of the cracks that have been revealed in our society. I am so depressed by the ugliness of so many peoples attitudes to their fellow citizens. It was already there with Brexit and the divisions that caused but has been exacerbated with the gulf further widening between young and old, rich and poor, disenfranchised or marginalised and mainstream. The analogy of us all being at sea in a storm but not all in the same boat seems apt. I thought that we were slowly inching forward, becoming a better more tolerant society but the trauma of coping with Covid has knocked a huge chunk off our emotional capacity to care. We have empathy fatigue and that is having a knock on effect outside of the actual event. I theorise it like society being knocked a few notches down Maslow’s triangle but perhaps someone has a better theoretical model?
Well, i have started adding a PCR test budget to my regular expenses list so i do believe that as well sadly.
The UK has one of the most compliant population of nodding dogs on the planet. I don’t doubt it.
Unfortunately far to many people now have to always go for the most extreme option.
Thr answer isn’t Lock down or disregard everything.
We could of handled the Pandemic quite well if we could stop seeing everything as an absolute and competition.
The answer isn’t locking down but it also isn’t fuck everything, it’s always been somewhere in the middle and you then slowly swing a little to either side depending on the situation at that moment.
We royally fucked this up… Not just in the UK, its happened in many places.
We as a species have such a long way to go….
We’re in the best case scenario we could ever imagine being in and the government as well as many people still want major restrictions, so it’s a totally reasonable prediction that we will never return to normal.
There will always be covid, always be variants so will we always have restrictions?
I think we have to do this dance a few more times and eventually people need to realise that we need to just start living our lives and live with it like we have done with the flu/common cold.
It’s scary that people think endless restrictions is a genuine option, makes me wonder why people are so ok with this. I assume because many people have seriously benefitted since COVID began and want the measures in place, such as your typical blogger/journalist who wakes up at 10am to work from home every day since it began, or the NHS receptionist who can continue to be rude on the phone without having to see patients.
Even if the pandemic ends, it’s hardly going to go back to normal unless we reverse Brexit or sort out an actual good trade deal with the EU. Would be good to have the rights I’ve had for pretty much all of my life back, then it might seem to be back to normal.
Well it won’t if the people that keep arguing for more restrictions all the time (and, when we have them, keeping them for longer) win the argument.
Covid isn’t going away, but normal life can do, with a few minor adjustments (an ongoing vaccination programme, like for flu, is likely to be necessary, and more NHS capacity probably is too).
Is everyone here a dystopia-loving zoomer? Does no-one miss the 90s when everything was cheap and life was optimistic?
The old normal had some truly awful aspects which included:
1. Employers doing their utmost to prevent WFH
2. Lack of awareness of personal space when on public transport
3. Insufficient personal hygiene e.g hand washing/using tissues
4. Allowing a business to have unlimited customers; causing in store congestion
5. No self-service in certain retail establishments
6. Not being able to book medical appointments online
7. People ‘soldiering on’ and coming into work when they have coughs and sneezes.
All of these issues have been improved and I hope there is no regression.