I Don't Think "New Normal" Means What You Think It Means

I hate it when people use the phrase new normal.  It's never a lead in to something nice.

"Teenage pregnancy is the new normal."

"Partisanship is the new normal."

"Hard drugs in college is the new normal."

"Masks and social distancing are the new normal."

Now, I don't mean to suggest that mask-wearing is as horrible a thing as teenagers regularly taking hard drugs.  The thought of my kids potentially getting hooked on cocaine in college is (rightly) far more terrifying than the thought that I might have to wear a mask to the grocery store for the rest of my life.

That doesn't mean the latter thought is agreeable, though.

In fact, every time someone says, vis-a-vis COVID, "Things aren't ever going back to normal"--I want to scream.

They always say it as if it was this epiphany.  Maybe so!  Maybe so.  But if so, it's an epiphany the way "I just discovered that my best friend is a big liar" or "my parents aren't my real parents" or "chickens are cannibals" is an epiphany: not a good one.

It's also, I think, a sign of defeatism.  If, as a society, we can invent the cotton gin and send men to the moon and eradicate polio and clone Dolly the Sheep and build the Empire State Building and create GMO food (whether or not you think these are all good things)--if we can do all that, we can beat a rinky-dink virus.  How?  When?  My guess is that eventually there will be a vaccine for it which, like the flu vaccine, is administered yearly to those who are willing to take it; and that eventually most people will build up immunities to common strains of it through catching mild versions during childhood.  Yes, it will take a while for all of that to come about; yes, some people will die, horribly, in the meantime; yes, some states will be on lockdown for as long as their governors feel they can keep them that way.

But eventually things *will* go back to the old normal.  Or at any rate--things eventually *can* go back to the old normal.  One just has to have the faith to think that human creativity can solve problems, the political will to back candidates who think things can be fixed as opposed to merely managed, and the wisdom to know the difference.