I hope normal returns. I think there’s been a slightly worrying precedent set of the government being able to control people/ businesses to stop the hospitals being too busy.
I'm also a bit worried about this.
One thing that is preying on my mind is the fact that societies everywhere are aging, especially in Europe and much of Asia (including in many middle income countries that are not particularly wealthy at all).
Aging societies experience growing pressure on healthcare services even at normal times, due to old people needing ever growing amounts of care for longer, and because fewer younger workers means fewer tax payers and fewer nurses and other healthcare workers.
Going forward, any kind of pandemic illness is going to wreak more havoc simply because elderly people are becoming more numerous. Are we going to start seeing more calls for regular lockdowns and school closures in winter due to regular bed pressure caused by aging populations? As mentioned, a precedent may perhaps have been set.
Demographers sometimes talk about something called the "low fertility trap," where the growing number of elderly people in society starts to exert downward pressure on growth and dynamism, which further depresses birth rates among young people, leading to still faster aging of the population and engendering a vicious circle. COVID-19 arguably encapsulates some of this logic-we are already seeing evidence that birthrates over late 2020 - early 2021 are far lower than would have been expected. Doing this kind of thing regularly risks causing a downward spiral. Immigration has also fallen through the floor-many people will have been permanently put off from migrating as a result of this.
I don't know exactly what I am driving at here, but I'm feeling a bit concerned.