When this Covid pandemic first kicked off globally during the first few months of 2020, there was much talk of 'new normals' to come. Whilst we now fortunately seem to be well past the most hazardous phase of the pandemic (obviously for the better), many people appear to have resumed a lot of their old (pre-pandemic) habits, as if the pandemic never even happened at all.
Shops, pubs, etc, and the roads in general pretty much seem to be back to the way they were before in 2019 (and most years before it).
Even well into the first half of 2021 we were still getting wall-to-wall coverage of Covid on the BBC and Sky News channels pretty much day in day out, plus of course the 5 pm live briefings from Downing Street, all of which now seem like a lifetime ago.
I don't personally know what to make of the current situation concerning the pandemic, which still remains far from over in the grand scheme of things, but the media in general (for better or worse) have been harping on about various other issues (e.g, Ukraine, the COL crisis/shortages, Boris and Co's scandals, Monkeypox, Hepatitis, Polio, and now of course the heatwave) instead since the start of 2022.
Half of me kind of feels a bit guilty for 'letting my guard down', but the other half of me feels that I finally need to bite the bullet and start living life once again without being a hermit living in perpetual fear of almost anything and everything.