Quite right. I used the term "new normal" above and that was a bad choice of words, a dumb cliché.
That depends on how quickly something becomes normal.
Before the digital age it took time for news to spread further than via the tv or radio; the rest was a case of local mouth-to-mouth conversation. That meant that folks could be up to date with what was broadcast, but that also meant the rôle of propaganda could be far more powerful in all sorts of ways. So, consequently, new information leading to change took time, and that directly governed and governs what the speed of reaching different versions of normality can mean.
Today, with the speed with which we adapt to events worldwide, with so much information available about deaths, infections and the rest of it, driven by graphically powerful images of streets empty of anyone but police and/or military, the sense of déjà-vu cuts in and allows us to think it's been like this for months with
all of us because, in a sense, it has, the crisis creeping from country to country but still seen in our own homes as it were happening on our own streets from day one of the pandemic.
So yeah, the new normal does seem to have been a legitimate phrase to use. And I do believe it's going to be the norm for a helluva long time to come, if the authorities have the sense to keep the isolation measures in place long enough to be certain that the thing is dead and not just lingering in the wings. I fear that they will not wait, and decide to sound the all clear far too soon and throw us right back in where we are today.
