To hope once this is over people will reconsider how they live

[screamer1]

It feels like this might be the culmination of many different issues going on in the world atm..

Air travel / climate change
Shoe string welfare state
Brexit and relationships / communication with neighbouring countries

Obviously they're not directly related to CV, but it feels like the chickens might be coming home to roost

Yes I think this will be the start of massive changes.

What ? Nothing will change, people will still want to travel, they just don't want to get ill. So actually people want immunisations against these type of illnesses.

The main issue is even if some people don't travel as much they are still mixing with people that do, at work, at school at clubs. I don't think isolating yourself will work, we need more community not to be shut away.

I hope that we do this and don’t just breath a sigh of relief and carry on as before.

I'm not saying people should be shut away. But I do think reconsidering our world more broadly rather than just continuing as we were would make sense.

Obviously there's always been plague, flood and pestilence. But, I think this could be a moment of reflection. At least I hope so.

I think it depends on the outcome of the epidemic, OP. If Covid19 fizzles out without too many deaths and only short lived social disruption, I think a lot of people will just go back to business as usual. You can imagine them just heaving a sigh of relief and jetting off for the long haul holiday that they’d put on hold!
If it turns out to be a lot worse than that, then yes, social change often follows pandemics. Even on a small level, I hope people will have become more resilient, and more willing to care for their neighbours, or volunteer to help plug gaps when staff are off sick etc. The temporary unavailability of consumer crap from China may also encourage people to reassess how much “stuff” - clothes and possessions - they actually need.

I can't imagine it will change things massively.

It should but it probably won't.

Hopefully people will start to wash their hands more, keep off work when they are ill, not put others at risk by visiting vulnerable people if they are unwell, limit hospital visitors and stop people using a hospital visit as a family day out. The health services could look at extending gp and minor injury centres so that hospitals can free up a&e for sick patients, put more money into social care to free up beds, increase attendance and carers allowance, increase carers wages. Private hospitals and private health providers should be totally self sufficient.

Some will ... but for some it'll be a distant memory in 1yr/2yrs/5yrs and they'll be just the same again.

Governments need to close down the illegal markets