Well, someone needs to stop @BlowBadness reading dystopian fiction, stat. And I say that as someone who plays a running game of “1984” and “children of men” bingo with govt pronouncements (across the board. Not just re: covid).
It’s important to remember that viruses can mutate themselves into less deadly and less effective strains (seemingly what we’re seeing in Japan) and also that EVEN when there are long running pandemics/ epidemics, even when these are incredibly deadly or injurious (Spanish flu, smallpox, polio) - society eventually just lives with it, with very little disruption to the social order once the worst is over. They are ruptures, but ruptures we tend to be seemingly inclined as a society to knit back together as closely as possible to how things were before. (However shit that might have been!)
Things that DO change legally/at a high political level/ socially tend to be directly linked to healthcare, disease control, etc.
I actually think there have been some enormous missed opportunities around covid to create new ways of living and thinking that could have left us in a far better place post-covid than we were before- for example, the issues with transmission in schools would have been a BRILLIANT opportunity to move more schools towards more outdoor based learning (forest school style), as ventilation is key- instead it was “ah open a window and hope for the best”.
We saw an enormous benefit to the planet very quickly when manufacturing shut down briefly- did this suggest that there might be environmental merit in global “holidays” once every year or six months, when all non essential manufacturing stopped? Like massive “rest periods” for the planet? (Taking the Mexico City model where you can only drive your car on certain days)?
Other things like UBI, shorter work weeks, use of masks in winter to reduce all viral transmission, reduction of reliance on plane travel and renewal of interest in train travel...
All of these things - some very small and practical, others insanely blue sky- could be interesting to explore. Maybe we still will. Maybe that’s what will come from this Omicron variant- maybe it will be really transmissible, and necessitate lockdowns - a second chance to learn the lessons from 2020? Or maybe it will fizzle or burn itself out?
None of us knows- but I can guarantee that at some point - probably soon- we will socially come to an unconscious agreement to just “live with it”- whatever that means for death tolls/ long term effects- rightly or wrongly. It’s what we’ve done for millennia, from the plague to the Spanish flu.