The Question – Life after Coronavirus

Our world has been changed over the last few months, nearly all of our lives have been changed by Coronavirus. In this piece, I want to explore how our life may be changed forever, the long term impacts on us and what we may need to keep long term.

Since we began to go into various lockdowns many of us have been spending most of our time at home, we have nowhere to go, this has caused major changes in how we live and work. This poses the question of when we can go back to normal, what will be normal. I am not a doctor or expert in diseases, epidemiology, and have no medical training.

I think, from reading various trusted sources that we will need to live with the virus. The science and people I know who work in public health/NHS say that this virus will become very weak over the coming years, but we will never beat it.

This means we may have to live with social distancing until the virus becomes part of the general flu cycle. We need to use these changes of not going out shopping as much, not seeing people physically for months as we have needed to limit social contact.

I wonder what this will mean as soon as all restrictions are lifted, watching the slow unlocking of lockdown from what I saw people appeared to be meeting outside in groups not being socially distance. You have to wonder moving forwards how long we are prepared to live in this way.

Shopping will be different, in mid-June all non-essential retailers were allowed to reopen, but trying on products was allowed but then those items were needed to be isolated for forty-eight hours. This means we could go into shops and the may have fewer products to sell.

This is a global pandemic which has interrupted supply chains, also we are going to see what we buy change.

We have seen the NHS at its best throughout this crisis, however, another crisis is I believe coming. As we move back into ‘new normal’ the health service is going to face a big backlog of canceled appointments, long waiting lists, and health needs which are greater because they weren’t caught early enough.

I believe that over the last few months we have learned how important having a well-funded NHS is, the government will have you believe that there have not been cuts and they’re continuing to invest. This isn’t a case, continued, ‘sub-contracting’ to private companies, black holes in trusts finances are only going to grow as a result.

We need a more integrated NHS, care and public health system, much of the care system in the community has been cut or harder to get as the Conservative government tries to balance the books. I think that part of the problem which has lead to

As we exit Coronavirus, we need to rebuild in-house services to support people and not sub-contract to private firms as it’s only going to run up the debt.

The way we live our lives is going to be different, we will need social distancing to control any future outbreak. We need to then find a way we can go about normal things while observing social distancing and being anti-social. It’s going to be a while until we can have big family weddings or parties.

Does this mean people will delay getting married until big gatherings are allowed? On the other hand, could we see an upswing in divorce? As well as the birth rate in 2020/21? The impact on our country could be huge and we will need to think about planning.

With many people working from home, could this become normal allowing people to work from the office when they don’t have to be on-site for work? This in someways would make it easier for those with disabilities and parents easier to work.

As the shops reopen could we see a social duty to wear face coverings in public when say we have general colds or is it more likely that we will be taking more time off or distancing ourselves from others. I think that we could see a change in our behaviour when we are out. Going out less often and doing bigger shops.

This, however, will lead to some job losses, but we need to look how we create good high skills jobs, but we need to think what the high skilled and core jobs are. I think the pandemic has proved that the importance of delivery drivers shop workers, civil engineers,

We all know that one-day Coronavirus will pass, do we long term want a change in our work-life balance becoming more flexible. Our leisure activities are likely to change, are we going to be warry of going into places like bars and restaurants if these become sources of Coronavirus outbreaks?

But we know that over the coming eighteen months we need to be living with the virus, I believe that the second wave of Coronavirus is going to happen. That means I think we will need to get used to seeing restrictions eased and relaxed over the coming years.

I think that people will be less likely to travel abroad especially with these isolation periods, we are going to have isolate when we get there and return meaning a two week holiday could take six weeks.

We have seen communities pull together to support each other this should not be temporary this should become part of who we are as a country. We need to be thinking about volunteering and watching out for our friends and neighbours. Where I live a compassionate communities program run partly by the council needs to be the foundation of bringing people together.

The furlough scheme I thing was a good measure, it protected so many jobs and I think it could be used as an argument for universal basic income. The way I would use UBI, is wages paid by employers at £7 p/h with the top up by the government to £10. Those who are disabled or can’t work for health reasons would get the full wage paid by the government.

The UBI would be payable to all those people earning up to the annual minimum wage, with employers paying 2% wage rise per year worked for the company.

The biggest problem is when it is over how do the government pay off the debt we have grown over the last six months, ten years ago they had promised to wipe out the deficit by 2015 they failed. As we ended the crisis they only just reached a surplus, but research from Full Fact shows that by the proportion that has grown 53% to 2016-17.

Government debt surging to £1.95trn, exceeding the size of the economy for the first time in more than 50 years. Debt will need to be paid off, I don’t see how we can do that, I don’t think the public can take even more austerity.

I think the pandemic has exposed the weakness of austerity, it has left councils who have the responsibility for public health and social care and the NHS racking up debt and stretching already stretch services. The pandemic drill in 2016, warned of “inadequate ventilation”, no stockpile of ventilators, antivirals, antibiotics and personal protective equipment for NHS staff.

We need to build more ITU compacity in our hospitals, figures released by NHS England showing pre-COVID statistics dated 9^th April shows 3,342 of 4,122 ITU Beds are permanently occupied. Roughly around 80% occupancy rate all year round for adult ITU beds.

I believe all hospitals need to have at least a thirty-bed ward for ITU which is often the standard, as well as an area or another outpatient ward/department which can be easily converted into extra beds is there is not only a local spike in Coronavirus but any kind of disease which requires ITU beds.

We will all need to take responsibility for our general health, you need to eat well, exercise, sleep well, and know our limits. Now is the I think to make lasting changes to our lifestyles, we have been working and living differently. Now I think is a time to reassess who we are and what part of the lockdown lifestyle we want to keep, and what we want to return to… that is your question…