New trends of the post covid era

As the globe is moving out of the pandemic era week by week, many believe that the society will never be the same. The way we live, work, socialise and travel may have changed for good. Many of the changes are in fact considered positive and progressive. One of these, on which not every one agrees is remote working.

Those who still remember the morning and evening “rush hours”, the consequence of almost every one going to -  and coming back from work at the same time can see the stupidity of that ritual through hindsight. The pollution and emissions from cars, the wasted time and stretched nerves of the drivers, all for going to an office and sitting down at a desk, which it turns out you could have as well done at home. The jury is till out on weather the productivity has decreased or increased due to working from home, but many companies have already announced that they will let their employees work from home at least partially.

The Pandemic has certainly shaken our trends and traditions, and with that new words have been coined for phenomenons we didn’t have names for earlier. Here are some of those terms which will probably live on after the pandemic.

Staycation

Domestic travel took off during the pandemic as cross-border travel restrictions kicked in. Lockdowns confined people to their homes which suddenly also became a workplace. So living and sleeping in your new “office” turned out to be dull after a while. The local hotels who had lost their international clients, turned to the locals. The idea is to get out of your new homeoffice and stay in a hotel, even in your own town, for a few days or a weekend. Of course, it could have become so expensive, that you would need to get a loan to cover it.

Workation

Now that we can all work remotely, and traveling is becoming possible, why not work in a beach in Thailand or Spain than at home. Enter “Workation”, a new marketing term for hotels and resorts for those who want to mix work and vacation in a desirable setting. All you need is a swimsuit and your laptop. They provide the internet and the scenery. Come 5 o'clock, you can have a swim, or close the excels and open your favourite website.

Elbow bump

From all the substitutes for a hand shake, the elbow bump is probably the most stupid one.

The elbow area is extremely bony and the place your nerves pass very close to the skin. Additionally, you need to get much closer to the other person than in a hand shake to have elbows touch. The corona virus being an airborne disease, the chances are you breath in the other person’s exhaled air and there you go.

It would be much better even to have a proper hand shake and the wash your hands right away. There are plenty of stylish options from other cultures, such as “namaste” palms together or right hand on the heart greetings, but we needed to invent our own new one, didn’t we?

Airhug

Those who used to hug instead of shaking hands have been suffering from a higher empathy deficiency due to social distancing. Enter the “Airhug”. Hold it as long as you want with no risk of infection. Air-guitar experience a plus.

Super-spreaders

The term super-spreaders may have been known to academics of epidemiology and public health, but we all know what it means now. Even though super-spreader was first thought of as a person who for mysterious reasons transmitted the infection to significantly more people than the average Joe, it is increasingly being thought as a behaviour or archetype. Anyone can become a super-spreader if he or she sings, laughs and talks load, but most of us don’t, and we all know someone who does. 

Luckdown

What would you have thought a lockdown is before the pandemic? Maybe a martial art technique or foreclosure of a business? Now we associate lockdown with bars, restaurants and shops being closed and people working from home. Will lockdowns vanish into history after we are out of he pandemic? Time will show. 

Key-workers

If you had asked someone in the street in 2019, who do you think are the key- or essential workers of the society, whose contribution is basic and important for the rest of us, you may have got totally different answers than you would get know. The pandemic made us aware of how important the roles of blue collar workers in the grocery chain, and the nurses in the hospitals is. 

Covidiot

Covidiot is someone who disregards the social distancing and hygiene instruction during the pandemic. It’s the arshole who comes to a tight space not wearing a mask or coughs into his palm and then passes you the salt. It turns out that we have always had covidiots, but they were not under the spotlight as much as now. One recent example of covidiots are the Finnish football fans who traveled to St. Petersburg - even though they knew that the more dangerous Delta variant is rampant there - and exposed themselves to the virus in bars and pubs, brought it back to Finland, and some of them then went straight to an outdoor festival in Jämsä. The result has been hundreds of new cases and counting.