It's going to be so interesting when this is over, all the strange habits we will have made and will have a hard time to let go of.
It also gives me pause to think that some people will never recover (bordering on mental illness), some people will forever be afraid of physical closeness to others after going through this.
Absolutely, I wonder when/if not wearing masks will be totally normal again. How will it affect the next generation?
My daughter isn't much older than this pandemic, and she's been used to seeing people with face masks on her whole life; one of her first words is "mask". She's had to struggle her way through her first year not being able to use all of the usual visual cues we are used to seeing in peoples faces, but has done so without a hiccup that I can see, it's just normal to her.
I don't think the psychological effect will last very long among most of the population, based on two observations. One is that whenever lockdowns have been lifted in Europe, restaurants and pubs swiftly went back to being packed – and even now some restaurants in e.g. Italy and Poland are defying the restrictions and reopening, and still getting queues of people waiting to enter.
And not only does concern among younger generations about the virus vary widely, but many touristic locales that attract crowds of elderly people, the predominant risk group for COVID, were just as crowded in summer 2020 as any other year, with little regard for distancing.
I've no idea why you were being downvoted, I think that there will be some lingering habits that may take a while to dissipate, but I think a lot of people are depesperate to get back to something resembling normality.
Frankly as soon as it's genuinly safe to do so (who knows when that will be) I'll be having people round and visiting people all the time.
There's some subset of people who think that any talk of going back to normal (even as a future thing) is premature, actively dangerous, and probably associated with right-wing politics.
It also gives me pause to think that some people will never recover (bordering on mental illness), some people will forever be afraid of physical closeness to others after going through this.