When Will We Return to Normal?
Will we ever do this again? Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash
On December 22, 2001, a radicalized British citizen named Richard Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami wearing a shoe packed with explosives. Twenty years later, removing shoes to get through airport security remains a standard procedure — even though the infamous "shoe bomber" was unsuccessful in his attempted attack. Nobody was killed yet few people object to the inconvenience of shuffling through metal detectors in socks.
By contrast, in just one year of coronavirus, half a million Americans have died. Logically, if one considers actual probabilities, we should never discontinue masks, plexiglass barriers and physical distancing. Yet we are all eager for these inconveniences to end — asking ourselves, “when will life return to normal?” We don’t see a contradiction in our willingness to remove our shoes at the airport (a Patriotic response to thwart terrorism) but exasperation at wearing a mask (an imposition by global elites and the deep state).
Most of this contradiction has to do with how we assess risk as human beings. For those of us who aren't actuaries, vivid but infinitesimally unlikely risks can seem more threatening in our minds. Mundane, every day risks get pushed out of our consideration. We are more afraid of plane crashes than car crashes. More afraid of shark attacks than drowning. More afraid of a bite from a poisonous spider than contracting malaria.
This familiarity bias is summarized in an article called "The psychology of risk perception" published by Harvard Medical School: "Novel risks are perceived to be more dangerous than more familiar threats." In the early days of coronavirus, it was a novel risk. But as it has become a more familiar threat, we have become somewhat desensitized. With a possible end to the pandemic now in sight, it will be interesting to see what things never return to normal — whether we will see it as a novel risk or a familiar threat. Will we ever again shake hands with strangers? Assemble in conference rooms? Attend a concert? Cluster around a crowded bar to get a drink? Will wearing masks, at least in certain circumstances, become as routine as buckling our seatbelts or wearing a bike helmet?
Even when an immediate threat subsides, the experience can make us more aware of that category of threat. We still worry about terrorist attacks even though the shoe bomber is serving three life sentences in a supermax prison in Colorado and Osama bin Laden is dead. Similarly, COVID-19 has made us more acutely aware of the category of threat that coronaviruses represent. Although a pandemic the scale of COVID-19 hasn’t happened in a century (i.e. a “novel risk”), coronaviruses themselves are a fairly common phenomenon. Once our current viral nemesis (specifically, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19) is defeated, it's only a matter of time before a new coronavirus breaks out. This more “familiar threat” happens about once a decade. The last one was in 2012 called MERS-CoV, the virus that caused MERS. In 2003, we had SARS-CoV, the coronavirus that caused SARS. We will have another coronavirus.
What changes to our behavior, laws and social norms will persist in order to minimize that future threat? Beyond safety measures and vaccines, perhaps our most effective weapon against such viruses is information — tracking our movement to identify potential exposure and enforce mandatory quarantines. Which raises an even larger question of how will we manage the balance between personal liberty and collective safety? The depressing reality is that returning to a pre-pandemic “normal” may never happen, just as returning to a pre-terrorism normal really didn’t either. We might be better off accepting the new normal. Or, maybe we will do what we do as a species, and forget about the “familiar threat” — until the next outbreak.