After the pandemic
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How the coronavirus will change our lives forever — from music to politics to medicine.
If history is any guide, not much will change in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. During the influenza scourge of 1918, disorder was everywhere…When the pandemic subsided, people rushed to regain their sense of equilibrium and normalcy.
Certain habits did change. Americans never returned to the common drinking cup, outlawed during the crisis and previously common in schools, offices and railway cars; they frowned on public spitting. Public health leaders celebrated their success in providing basic education on sanitation and personal hygiene. But the deaths of 675,000 Americans did not spur a remaking of the health-care system. Efforts by Progressive-era reformers had failed to create a national health insurance program and, despite the pandemic, withered in the 1920s.
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