Four years ago this week, the world started shutting down due to a mysterious new coronavirus. Our lives changed suddenly and drastically. But how many of those changes are still with us today?
Lesson summary
Hi everyone, I’m Jeff and you are listening to Plain English. This is where we help you upgrade your English with stories about current events and trending topics. You listen here, you stay informed about the world, and you get to expand your English vocabulary and practice your listening at the same time. Win-win, right?
Coming up on today’s Story: It has now been four years since the “novel coronavirus” swept through the world, and it’s only now becoming possible to look back dispassionately, process what happened, and determine how, or if, the trajectory of the world changed.
Today, we’ll talk about ways the world didn’t change as a result of the pandemic. And on Thursday, we’ll do the opposite. We’ll look at changes to society that have stayed with us even as the pandemic has ended.
This is Lesson 658 of Plain English. That means JR has uploaded the full lesson content to PlainEnglish.com/658. That’s where you go if you want the transcript, fast audio, and exercises that go along with today’s story. PlainEnglish.com/658. Let’s dive in.
Here’s how life didn’t change after the pandemic
In the heat of the moment, a lot of people—myself included—made some bold predictions about how the world would change forever as a result of the coronavirus. We all knew—or, we were pretty sure—that the pandemic would end. But we thought that even after the end, the pandemic would cause permanent changes in our behavior.
Some of those predictions came true, but many did not. So here are some ways we mistakenly thought the world would change.
Let’s start with health. Wearing face masks in public was common in Asia before COVID, but it was new to the rest of the world. Many people cheerfully said they liked it; it made them feel healthier and safer. (I was not one of those people: I wore my mask dutifully, but grudgingly.)
Some people predicted that, post-pandemic, people would continue to wear face masks in public. The coronavirus, the thinking went, heightened our awareness of germs and disease. That prediction turned out not to be true. A very small minority of people do still wear masks in public, but the habit has largely fallen by the wayside.
What about being in crowded places? One of the earliest symbols of the pandemic was a cruise ship, quarantined off the coast of Japan. The virus was sweeping through the ship and the passengers were not allowed off. Surely, nobody would want to get on a cruise ship again—not after seeing what can happen if disease starts to spread onboard?
And surely, the days of packed indoor bars and concerts, people bumping up against each other, all breathing the same air and touching the same surfaces—surely, even after the pandemic, nobody would want to do that again.
Those predictions proved incorrect. Cruises are popular again. Few people have any qualms about packing into bars and concert halls. When it comes to personal space, we seem to have gone right back to the way of the world before COVID.
Peloton was a big winner of the pandemic years. With gyms closed, consumers bought solo exercise equipment. A Peloton is a fancy exercise bike. A subscription lets users watch hyper-caffeinated instructors scream motivation through a screen. New at-home gym equipment from Peloton and other companies promised to make commercial gyms and group exercise obsolete.
But solo exercise proved to be a passing fad. The at-home exercise equipment was no match for a fully-equipped gym. And the subscriptions for the at-home classes were almost as much as a cheap gym membership anyway.
Many people discovered the joys of living in a huge house far away from the rest of humanity. Homebuilders started modifying the floorplans in new homes. They included dedicated work-at-home space for not one but two remote workers. With the flexibility to “work from anywhere,” people would choose to abandon the high costs and cramped spaces of big cities and instead opt for spacious living, fresh country air, and Zoom calls.
And people did quickly jump on that trend. Some have stuck with it. But many people who left the city now regret their decision—or they are moving back to the city. People openly predicted that the age of the big city was over. Nobody would want to live in cities, some people said. And the geography of big cities has changed. But it’s not because they’re emptying out. Offices might be empty, but the streets of London, New York, Paris and other global cities are as vibrant as ever.
Remember your vaccine card? Or the health app that showed your vaccine status and negative tests? They were sometimes called “vaccine passports.” In many places, these were essential to get into crowded places.
Europe had a continent-wide app that showed its residents’ vaccine status and recent test results. That seemed like it might be the way of the future—not just for COVID, but for other health metrics too. “Contact tracing” could be used to stop any type of infection, not just the coronavirus. This type of verified health data would be part of crossing international borders and gaining access to public places.
That didn’t happen either. After the immediate danger of COVID subsided, there was no need to check anyone’s vaccination status. The COVID-era system didn’t work very well anyway: there were too many differences in data standards and too many exceptions for the system to work well. This was an innovation that proved unnecessary post-COVID.
Did you ever order from a “ghost kitchen?” A ghost kitchen was a restaurant with a commercial kitchen, but no dine-in option or storefront. We talked about them in Lesson 208. They were popping up in warehouses and other spaces, and they only served delivery apps. But now, ghost kitchens are dying—and barely anyone has noticed. The fast-food chain Wendy’s and the grocery chain Kroger have both closed their ghost kitchen businesses.
So is life really 100 percent back to the way things were before? Are we living in 2019 again? Not quite. There are some permanent changes—some for the better, some for the worse. We’ll explore those in our next Story on Thursday.
Jeff’s take
I was tempted. I was tempted, but I did not go back into the transcripts of old Plain English lessons to see which of my statements about COVID proved to be correct and which proved, well, not to be correct in the long run. If you’re curious, we did a lot of COVID-related topics in the 230’s, 240’s, and 250’s. So you can scan through those if you want to time travel a bit.
But if there’s one thing I could take back, if there’s one statement in the whole six year history of Plain English, if there’s one thing I really regret, it came in Lesson 234. February 17, 2020. I won’t repeat what I said. But I belittled the effectiveness of a paper face mask.
We own up to our mistakes here at Plain English. That was one I wish I could take back. Anyway, remember, some things have changed—some for the better—since COVID. And we are going to explore that on Thursday.
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