Spring Back To Normal?: The Weekly COVID-19 Update

On the no news is good news front, the world remains more positive than negative in their sentiment surrounding the COVID-19 situation.

Not surprisingly, we are normalizing social distancing quickly. No longer the hot topic, mentions of social distancing are steadily declining. This goes for both negative comments expressing worry and positive comments encouraging distancing. (As one of our team pointed out, it would be a mistake to interpret the drop in positive sentiment as a lack of support for social distancing. You have to read the posts to see what is really going on.)

This begs the question “when will it be over?” As marketers we wonder if and how life will spring back to normal. One possible future is embodied in China where the lifting of restrictions led to an explosion of desire to travel again.

Huangshan mountain range, a popular tourist site in China in the Anhui province. Source: South China Morning Post.

But this isn’t the only perspective. Another examines whether our core attitudes and values will be changed by the threat of COVID-19 and the health measures taken.

As humans we are surprisingly poor at accurate self-perception. Rather than understanding our values and attitudes, we infer them by observing our behaviours. If I never eat Brussels sprouts without bacon, I must not like Brussels sprouts without bacon. (I mean, really, why would I like Brussels sprouts without bacon?)

The same might apply now. How long do I need to distance myself from other people before I become uncomfortable in close quarters? China has very different “personal space” boundaries than we do, so the China experience may not be relevant in Western culture.

Health psychology researchers (specifically Phillippa Lally, University College London) have found it takes 66 days for a new behaviour to become automatic – with a range from 54 to 254 days.

With the COVID-19 peak not expected until late May, we will have been living social distancing for at least 75 days before restrictions ease, likely much longer. And with a reported 25% of our population not practicing social distancing at all, we may be in for some very interesting cultural shifts.

How we emerge from the pandemic will be fascinating to live though and potentially as life changing as the pandemic itself.