When COVID first changed everything, a lot of what we did felt unnatural at the time, but some of it actually made sense. People washed their hands constantly. They thought twice before coughing all over everybody in public. If someone felt sick, they stayed home instead of treating the rest of us like unwilling participants in an immunity experiment. And for a while, people generally got sick less often—not just with COVID, but with colds, flu, and all the usual junk that gets passed around every year.
Somehow, though, those habits mostly disappeared.
We went back to being as careless as ever when it comes to basic hygiene and public courtesy. People cough openly, walk around sick, and act like handwashing is an optional hobby again. So in that sense, one of the few genuinely useful lessons from that period didn’t stick.
But some of the less healthy habits absolutely did.
During COVID, we leaned hard into screens because we had to. Social media became even more central. Texting replaced conversations even more than before. People got used to staying home, interacting through devices, and keeping distance from one another. The strange thing is that even after the emergency passed, a lot of that stayed. We regained the freedom to go back out into the world, but in many ways people seem less socially connected than they were before.
So we managed to return to being physically careless while also staying emotionally distant. That’s an impressive combination if you think about it.
A lot of the visible COVID changes are gone now. Toilet paper and paper towels are back on shelves. Hand sanitizer is no longer treated like liquid gold. The six-foot stickers are still stuck to floors in some places, but nobody pays attention to them. Facial coverings are optional, and thankfully most of the miserable PPE has disappeared—the plastic shields, gloves, gowns, desk barriers, and all the rest of it. Looking back, it’s hard not to wonder how much money was poured into things that mostly ended up in storage rooms or dumpsters.
So I’m not sure I’d say I’ve adapted to the changes brought on by COVID, because most of the obvious changes didn’t last.
What lasted were some of the social side effects, and honestly, I wish we had kept more of the useful habits and fewer of the isolating ones. I’d gladly trade a little more handwashing and common sense for a little less distance and a little more ability to talk to each other like normal human beings.
Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.
