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Are you getting tired of hearing or reading about the "new normal" (whatever it means) in relation to the pandemic?

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Russia had it figured out and did not lock down and let people mix together. It is called herd immunity and it is expected that up to 80 percent of people there will have become immune in the next month or so.

Links, please.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

What actually is the new normal.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

I'm not tired of hearing it, because, um, it's kinda important.

6 ( +9 / -3 )

What annoys me is the constant focus on the US demographic.

There's other nations suffering as well.

And an absolute shame on this site for not marking the passing of a civil rights hero, John Hume.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

The only phrase worse might be, "We're here for you..."

No you're not. You're here to make money.

The real question no one is talking about is what will our daily lives be like a year from now? There is still no guarantee of a vaccine that works. Will the nightly TV lead stories be the same grim death tolls and case numbers? How draining.

How are we going to shop? How are we going to eat in restaurants if the new reports of vaporization shows that no restaurants are safe due to recirculating air? Same for offices, masks or no masks? How will schools work? How will people survive if 40% of all businesses disappear? Where will millions of homeless families live after the evictions and foreclosures? Will there be tent cities in the deserts like refugees in Syria and other countries with devastated economies?

Are people waiting around, thinking that someone in the "government" is going to tell them what to do or come up with some solution?

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Yes, as well as with the other terms like social distancing and quarantine. I can't visit any news websites or channels without hearing these terms for at least 10 minutes. Even non-news websites are showing ads about it that you can't skip or close. Aren't they hyping this too much?

2 ( +7 / -5 )

what pisses me off about the new normal is that no one has defined it. The few things we hear about the new normal, such as working from home, are not really being implemented nor explored here. That gets under my skin too.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

“New normal”

”post pandemic”

“COVID-19 world”

x number of “cases”

Theres too many to name, but all have the same purpose

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Call me paranoid, conspiracy theorist, I don't care.

The phrase "new normal" is psychological conditioning, nothing less. It's preparing us for restricted travel, for our own safety of course, social distancing to engender distrust and break/prevent connections among people, face nappies that make it much harder to read each others' facial expressions and hinder interpersonal communication. 

Ultimately, it's to condition us to get so disrupted from our old daily lives that we will look to/beg some authority figure(s) to give us the solution and make it all go away. But that solution has a cost. 

How much will we/you/I be prepared to pay?

Fascinating. The only thing missing is a name.

So who’s behind this dastardly plan?

2 ( +4 / -2 )

I agree with JeffLee.

It still has a kind of fresh ring to it. You don't have to stick with the defined wording though. I prefer to talk about human spacing, and cleanliness, the consciousness of which has markedly reduced the incidence of other diseases this year, at the same time as keeping down the wildfire spread of WURS this as-yet unknown quantity. We are watching how it evolves, and rapidly developing treatments and preventative measures as fast as possible, while we protect our hospital systems, and we have lost so many precious medical staff, but how many more curve balls will it yet throw?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@kyronstavic

The usual suspects - Bill Gates and the Clintons. No George Soros?

I’m a bit disappointed.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Peter Neil - good questions.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

"New normal" concepts are not as bad as the overused "(something) in the time of coronavirus".

I doubt most people reading such trite have even heard of Garcia Marcus.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Call me paranoid, conspiracy theorist, I don't care.

The phrase "new normal" is psychological conditioning, nothing less. It's preparing us for restricted travel, for our own safety of course, social distancing to engender distrust and break/prevent connections among people, face nappies that make it much harder to read each others' facial expressions and hinder interpersonal communication.

That's not even remotely what I mean when I use the term.

Whom exactly are you listening to! Maybe you should stop... they're a little off by the sounds of it.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

There is no such thing as ‘normal’

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It’s not new, as mankind had many similar pandemic events in history, and it’s also not normal, but the contrast to normality. So it is simple double fault, or let’s say wrong words, a lie in itself and to oneself.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Call me paranoid, conspiracy theorist, I don't care.

The phrase "new normal" is psychological conditioning, nothing less. It's preparing us for restricted travel, for our own safety of course, social distancing to engender distrust and break/prevent connections among people, face nappies that make it much harder to read each others' facial expressions and hinder interpersonal communication.

Ultimately, it's to condition us to get so disrupted from our old daily lives that we will look to/beg some authority figure(s) to give us the solution and make it all go away. But that solution has a cost.

How much will we/you/I be prepared to pay?

-1 ( +4 / -5 )

Maybe your just not paying attention

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

JimizoAug. 4  09:57 pm JST

Call me paranoid, conspiracy theorist, I don't care.

The phrase "new normal" is psychological conditioning, nothing less. It's preparing us for restricted travel, for our own safety of course, social distancing to engender distrust and break/prevent connections among people, face nappies that make it much harder to read each others' facial expressions and hinder interpersonal communication. 

Ultimately, it's to condition us to get so disrupted from our old daily lives that we will look to/beg some authority figure(s) to give us the solution and make it all go away. But that solution has a cost. 

How much will we/you/I be prepared to pay?

Fascinating. The only thing missing is a name. 

So who’s behind this dastardly plan?

It's probably not whoever you think I'm thinking of.

Here's some background to why I oppose the "new normal."

A lot of people these days seem to think we're immune to or protected from immoral or amoral people simply by virtue of living in an ostensibly democratic society. Sure, there are checks and balances in place - there thanks to people who had lived under tyranny and wanted to protect their own and future generations from the same treatment. Lots of people tend to think despotic people and regimes are things of the past or things that happen to other countries, not ours. But I think that's a little naive.

The kinds of people who ran, facilitated, administered and supported authoritarian regimes in the past and present are amongst us, but to a certain extent the checks and balances that allow our society to function as it does keep them at bay. But you'll recognise them as the genuine sociopaths and psychopaths that make your life miserable on occasions at the everyday level: the bastard boss, manipulative neighbours and coworkers, minions who follow orders without thinking how moral or ethical they are. You know them.

But some of them are smarter than others, and have learned how to navigate our system to accumulate power and wealth without having to seize and maintain it through the explicit threat of violence. These are people with the same motivations and lust for power shared with your garden-variety authoritarians like Putin, Xi, Kim, Hitler, Stalin and the like, and the people under them, but need to work under a different framework to acquire and exercise it. That framework that keeps tyranny in check but it needs buttressing with free speech, freedom of movement and the ability to peacefully turf out leaders who push their luck and punish criminals through the rule of law for doing harm to the body and property of others. That doesn't exist in authoritarian societies, and is surely crumbling pretty fast right now in ours - using fear generated via a moderately dangerous virus to curb the freedoms we enjoy so some people can enjoy a power trip or consolidate power. To combine a couple of sayings, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Think people like Jeffrey Epstein - greed personified. Caught up with him, but it got him a long way first. Bill & Hillary Clinton, influencer peddlers par excellence. And countless others. The kind of people who would sell their own mother for money, power and influence.

Look at what's going on: strict lockdowns enforced by heavy fines in Victoria and elsewhere, destruction of economies all over the world, an unquestioning media that is constantly pushing fear and that the only solution is a vaccination (follow the money and PR, and much of it can be traced back to a dorky guy from Seattle who stands to make an enormous amount of even more money from mass vaccination through his investments), enforced mask wearing and social distancing that has the effect of hampering interpersonal communication, ridicule by the media of anyone who dares to question the official narrative as a "conspiracy theorist." Banning of videos on social media made by medical professionals who question how dangerous the coronavirus is, and who have found that treatment using an inexpensive drug plus zinc has shown to be effective in protecting their patients against the virus. But we can't have that. Why not?

Ask yourself who stands to benefit, and why. I don't have all the answers, but this "new normal" is something i find quite chilling.

And for something to read for insight, check out a famous book called "Influence" by Robert Cialdini. It helps to shed light on techniques that are used to shape public opinion. And there's "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud's nephew), written in the days before the word took on its modern meaning. He's also the guy who popularised smoking for women through his ads.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Getting sick of looking at everyone with their face nappies everywhere they go. Tired of the constant anouncments at supermarkets on corona virus. It's virtually back to normal in Japan now. The news is so many people everyday are now positive, but where are the deaths ? I fear this nonsense is going to carry on even next year. I agree, it is good to wear a mask if you have the flu but do people have to wear the damn things everywhere they go now. In the car, out in the open air, at the park, jogging, cycling. It's getting ridiculous.

Russia had it figured out and did not lock down and let people mix together. It is called herd immunity and it is expected that up to 80 percent of people there will have become immune in the next month or so. When you look at the statistics for deaths, Corona is well down the list. Hundreds of people die every day from all sorts of other sicknesses but no one constantly reports those deaths each day.

I don't fear " Corona " I fear the new norm.

-3 ( +8 / -11 )

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