The world has entered a new era with the emergence of COVID 19 pandemic and no one knows when things will return to normal, or what might become normal, or what might remain strange. Meanwhile, the world order has been changing fast. Several theories are being postulated. Anti-globalization rhetoric is being used widely. The “New Normal” of the world order is emerging, so the consensus is that countries need to save the earth from the epidemic if we need to live together.
“Lockdown”
The “lockdown” presumably was a formative experience for all of us. Everyone had to cope with it in his own fields and reorganise his life in different ways. The hardest hit, of course, are single elderly people and those in care homes. For many, despite supporting measures, things are getting tight to critical. On the whole, effective lockdown was only a short period of time. Everywhere one hears calls for an opportunity to learn from this crisis and to shape the future better. And maybe it‘s not so wrong to go back to the drawing board in both personal and social life. Many more children, teenagers and adults can be seen playing outside than before. The fact that you do not need to rush from place to place these days and you can relax on the balcony once in a while could be reinstated in your life from now on.
The term new normal
In connection with the coronavirus, we integrate newly emerging words into our vocabulary. Many of them already existed but were of no great importance to the majority of the population. Who has ever dealt with the wearing of face masks, except medical staff or people in industry or construction? Some of these terms are German, many are English. Who previously heard the word “reproduction rate” or “social distancing”, “prevalence” or “attack rate” every day? Which word will probably become the word of the year 2020? Will it be “lockdown” or the “new normal”? My take is the new normal as it is going to have a long term impact and the world might change permanently.
The new normal economy
Undoubtedly, this Coronavirus has put the world economy at a major risk. Coronavirus ravages the economic foundations of world trade. Commentators have identified this outbreak as an outcome of hyper-globalisation or starting of de-globalisation. However, the world is going to face recession; and the global losses, according to some commentators, may exceed the World Wars I and II combined. At the same time, the falling world price of crude oil has added further anxieties. Several estimates are now available on the economic loss and post-COVID-19 growth path, and most of the estimates show that the world is already in an economic crisis.
The New Normal and new existence
Zoom Meetings has emerged as one of the most essential needs of today’s world. Zoom meetings which were already growing before the pandemic but have very rapidly become a huge and in some ways essential. As it turns out, the company has the ability to respond to emergencies and scale up rapidly — but that was hardly considered a necessary skill in 2019. Virtual meetings, classrooms, workshops and even family meetings have emerged as a basic need of day to day living. Even marriage ceremonies are online and people are watching them from home. In a similar way, what makes a good worker or boss during a pandemic can be quite different than what makes a good worker or boss during normal times. Being able to work from a distance, for many months, is a skill rising in importance. Is that what companies should be looking for in new hires?
The new normal and education
“The bigger the challenges, the bigger the opportunity for growth”
Almost all educational institutes have adopted the digital approach to meet their students’ academic needs. In this era of COVID-19, our technological advances of the yesteryears, including smartphone adoption and the expansion of digital infrastructure, have paid off brilliantly.
Academic institutions role in the ‘New Normal’
Considering the magnitude of the challenge, surveillance technology will be of key importance in the post-lockdown period. It will not only ensure that all norms are strictly followed, but also help in contract tracing retrospectively should any case be spotted on-premises. The modern video-surveillance-based solutions can be programmed to detect COVID-related use cases including safe distancing norms. Perhaps, it will be wise to include them in the school’s suite of services.
Apart from it, sanitization, social distancing and protective gears such as face masks and shields will have to become a part of the school’s policy. Any person entering the school premises must further be sanitized and screened for body temperature. Only such proactive measures can keep the students safe until a COVID-19 cure is finally found.
Conclusion
Sadly the world has entered a new paralysis, most of all because no one knows when things will return to normal, or what might become normal, or what might remain strange. When this pandemic ends, one thing we can all look forward to is making better plans.-Bloomberg. A majority of medical experts believe that COVID-19 is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Some suggest that it might even take over a year to find the cure. So, all organizations from schools and colleges to our workplaces will have to operate in a different way till then – an era that we so often branded as the ‘New Normal’.
