Covid-19: Don’t delude yourself that this is the last ever pandemic – Helen Martin

THE biggest question facing us all, at a time when lockdown may be eased over the next month, is how much normality we will get back this year, or ever.

Even that isn’t something we all agree on. Some believe, and hope, we will return to life in 2019, revive all businesses and industries, restore the economy, and celebrate the virus being over.

Others acknowledge global deaths and fear, but also some of the unsuspected “benefits” the world has seen during coronavirus. They are not convinced about a total virus omission and are less likely to imagine any return to previous normality.

It might be helpful if governments or scientists – anywhere across the world – could accurately predict the future. But they can’t. It is still not known if a vaccine can be produced for a virus related to the unstoppable common cold. Nor is it known if the virus will mutate so fast that the vaccine quickly becomes outdated.

No-one knows if more waves may sweep the world, whether that’s down to climate, temperature, mutations, humans optimistically abandoning safety rules, or new discoveries. For example, seven new coronaviruses have been found in African bats. Scientific research reveals five are linked to those causing human colds but it will take more research to ensure the other two are not able to cause another pandemic. That’s the prevailing uncertainty.

What we know is that not all businesses will survive. Covid has, despite furlough and other supports, closed some companies. Most are trying their best to hang on but losing all income is balancing on a tightrope and depending on being able to open as soon as possible.bLocal companies who provide services to local people, everything from plumbing to double glazing, from gyms to shops, will recover.

One of the biggest industries in the riskiest position is tourism. I admit I felt strongly about overtourism in Edinburgh. But I wanted it to be limited and reduced, not obliterated. Having lost many other traditional industries, like most other cities over the last 50 years, tourism became the major part of our economy providing jobs not just for hotel, restaurant, bar and festival workers but for maintenance, furnishing, publishing, designing, all types of construction, marketing, advertising, tour buses, food supplies . . . an endless list.

Its over-development made too many dependent on it so the pandemic has put that in focus. Airlines are in trouble too. For essential travel they’re still needed but for holidays, with large numbers of passengers confined in small spaces with shared recirculated air and sitting inches from each other – and the same said for cruise ships – how soon, if at all, would our previous tourist levels return?

If the world really can “end” Covid, or other deadly viruses that emerge from infected markets, inedible toxic creatures on a plate, or any other source, it may be possible to return to “normality” although that may take years.

But if, as many experts have said, we have to “live with it”, the most important ambition would not be restoring everything as it was, but re-planning our lives, our industries, our social construction, employment, leisure, holidays, viral protection – everything. Along with that would be essential and active world re-planning for climate change and the environment – a little of which has ironically improved with Covid’s global shutdowns.

As we cautiously move through easing lockdown and getting our lives back, we have to obey rules to avoid a second wave. If we triumph, it would also be good if every country also considered a new and better future, and didn’t delude ourselves that Covid would be the last ever pandemic.

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