Masks, social distancing: How many things we did during the pandemic will still be with us?

Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) have officially declared that Covid no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (Pheic). It corresponds to the new strategy of the WHO to move from an emergency response to sustained management of the Covid disease in the longer term.

It may not change much in practice. Covid will continue to have pandemic status and countries will continue to have their own authority to treat Covid as an emergency in their territory (some countries, including the United States, have already declared the end of the national emergency).

However, for the global public health community, it is an event of monumental importance, as the emergency response period that began on January 30, 2020 comes to an end.

At the same time, for a large part of the general public, it can go relatively unnoticed. For many people, it’s been a long time since they saw covid as an emergency. In the UK, for example, Covid no longer appears on the survey of the National Statistics Office which asks people What do you think are the main problems facing the country? . Even a year ago only two out of five Britons they were very or somewhat concerned about Covid, according to the survey.

Along with other behavioral specialists, I followed public experiences of the pandemic over the past three years. The results have not yet been peer-reviewed, but by summer 2022, many participants in our research describes the pandemic as “a distant memory” or as if “it had never happened”.

As we move on to the next phase, it’s time to reflect on what we’ve learned about human behavior during the pandemic and what happens next.

At the start of the pandemic, many behavioral scientists, myself included, wondered if some of our pandemic habits they had come to stay . would they become masks a must-have in the wardrobe? Would people stop “moving on” and going to work if they weren’t feeling well?

It turned out that for most people, the pandemic has not permanently changed our behavior and habits nor did he create a “new normal “. Looking again at the UK, the use of face masks has steadily declined, with last month’s numbers suggesting that less than one in six adults had recently worn a face mask. Regular use is probably much less common.

Social distancing is long gone, except for a relatively small proportion of the public, especially those most vulnerable to Covid.

The Covid pandemic has taught us how adaptive behavior can be in particular, how many people were willing to change their behavior to keep themselves and others safe. Most people they followed the rules during the height of the pandemic no matter how hard it was. Covid reminded us how resilient we humans can be .

These pandemic adaptations, and the fact that our pre-pandemic behavior rebounded so quickly, show how important social cues and social norms are to behavior. Putting on a mask or keeping a distance from others were habits: actions that are automatically activated in response to contextual cues, such as seeing billboards with images of people socially distancing.

Social norms, what we think other people are doing, were key to vaccine acceptance and for our adoption of preventive measures in general . As these contextual cues disappeared and social norms began to change, and vaccination coverage increased and the risk for the majority decreased, our behavior changed.

The pandemic has also shown how important social connections and social contact, especially physical contact, can be. It’s something that we have already discussed that Covid could not hold off forever. According to social security theory, which views stress and well-being as the product of biological, psychological and social factors, Covid represents a threat for him “social fabric that makes humans resilient and keeps us alive and healthy.”

Unsurprisingly, life satisfaction and happiness were lower during closings And recovered when people started to mix socially again .

As we mark the end of the emergency phase, it is important to remember nearly seven million lives lost because of the Covid since 2020.

And of course we must consider that for some, especially those who are clinically vulnerable, the emergency is not yet over and may never be.

Although she is no longer a Feica, as WHO reminds us , Covid continues to be responsible for millions of infections and thousands of deaths every week around the world. Moreover, thanks to prolonged Covid, hundreds of millions of people are in need of long-term care.

Going forward, we must stop relying on the resilience of individuals to build the resilience of our institutions. We can all take steps to continue to protect ourselves and those around us from Covid and other respiratory viruses (such as wash one’s hands and keeping up to date with their vaccinations). But the responsibility for preventing public health emergencies should not be only in the hands of the public .

Actions that governments, employers and health authorities can take now could protect against coming public health emergencies . Tackle systematic misinformation, improve ventilation In schools workplaces and other indoor public spaces, and making long-term improvements to paid sick leave are good ways to start building more resilient societies in preparation for the next pandemic. Hopefully this is something we will never see in our lifetime.

* Simon Nicholas Williams Professor of Psychology, Swansea University