Now that the COVID pandemic lockdowns have lifted in most places, what are the changes you have noticed in society and/or your own personal behavior?

Try to list both Good and Bad changes.

GOOD:
- I'm more conscious of what I touch and how close I get to strangers in public places.
- I've noticed more people in public are more aware of what they touch and have larger personal bubbles.
- Online purchasing is easier and faster now.

BAD:
- Having always been a handshaking greeter, I now feel my greetings are less personal than I prefer because there is no longer that 'warm embrace of friendship' shared.
- The 'sling-shot effect' of inflation on the economy.
- Increased incompetence of service personel who were forced to work outside their chosen profession to make ends meet and have yet to recover their past achievements.
- Loss of certain imported product supplies and convience items in the brick and mortar stores.

I'm not too worried, as I carried on working on site when the lockdowns were in place (exempt from them due to my work), but I do find that now I don't go out to socialise. I tend to stay in and read.

I was never overly worried about it nor am I to this day. With that said, I do seem to have noticed a worsening of service all around. I think companies used and are using the Covid excuse to have less employees on hand and its certainly noticeable.

One issue is mask wearing. Staff in healthcare settings are still supposed to wear them, it is mandatory, even in low dependency units. It does not make sense to me, that on the other hand, people on crowded public transport can do whatever they like.

And unfortunately, fascist parties like the AfD in my native Germany, almost doubled their votes, because they hijacked the Anti Vaccination/Anti Lockdown propaganda of some braindead tinfoil hats

Nothing really. I have never been overly concerned about it, and it's so many months behind us now that it's not even on my mind anymore.

The only thing I did notice is how nasty people got to one another online when discussing things concerning it and anything that had to do with it, even remotely.
It quickly became clear many were in fear, very negative, and from that figured it was totally okay to be utterly rude and disrespectful to strangers.

That to me was a shock. To see that side of so many people.

I've never been afraid to touch anything. I've always washed my hands when I got home from for instance the supermarket.

What I have noticed, and is still going on, is that delivery from online purchases takes much longer as there are less planes etc. It used to always be very fast, but not back there yet. Also more people buying online that cause(d) tremendous delays.

But in general it's not on my mind, doesn't worry me, and I don't really notice anything of it.

Just to clarify...the thread has NOTHING to do with 'worry'. Its not really even about COVID.
Its about society and our own perceptions.

Its obvious the pandemic restrictions have changed people as well as business plans and strategies.
Some changes are positive while others are negative.

I haven't change at all. During, or after
the pandemic.

It still happens, but it's an extreme
rarity, to even see someone wearing a mask.

Yeah, I still see some people wearing masks but that's not the changes I mean.

The changes I'm talking about is attitudes and mannerisms which have changed.

For instance, I now buy more of items which are now harder to find.
On te other side of that, I've noticed a lot of stores I frequent have stopped carrying certain items I used to buy, I have to 'shop around' to find them if I even can.

Campbell's Cream of Bacon soup used to be at Dollar General. They were always running out so I bought 10 cans while they had it, good thing because now they no longer have it and the shelf has been relabeled to a different flavor = NO LONGER STOCKED.

Walmart parking now has 15 parking spots dedicated to Store Pick-up. More people are letting other people do their shopping for them. In Walmart their grocery shelves empty out and stay empty longer. The aisles are filled with 'shoppers' pushing those karts dedicated to Store Pick-up and Home Delivery.

I notice a major increase of new buildings and house being built in my area. Much more than before the pandemic restrictions.

Even tho the restaurants have reopened their dining areas, I notice fewer people choosing to sit down to eat, more people picking up their orders and leaving, more delivery cars making home deliveries.

I had three wrong addressed food orders show up at my door. When I tell the drivers they have the wrong address they get confused and immediately check their phones.

Many people at their jobs are just plain clueless or don't care. My son works for an independent contractor and he tells me the boss had to fire half of his crew because they either had no idea what they were doing or just didn't care how the did their jobs if they even showed up on time.

After the pandemic restrictions, people and society has changed. I see a lot of bad but I posted this thread to see if someone noticed any thing positive I am overlooking.

I've stopped wearing a mask, and have no problem going to places full of people. The pandemic has made me use online food delivery apps more often though, and I rarely dine in at restaurants.

People here in Malaysia are not required, but encouraged to wear a mask. A lot of people still wear it, probably out of habit.

Well... I can't honestly say if attitudes,
and/or, mannerisms have changed... As I
relocated from northeast Texas to the Gulf
Coast of Florida, during the pandemic.

I have noticed shortages at stores.
But, nothing really new there.

We never had empty shelves. Food was never a problem. Supermarkets have always been normally & fully stocked.

Restaurants etc. went back to normal after they were allowed to open their doors earlier this year. We were flooded by tourists as we always are. No change whatsoever.

As far as I know just about everyone has gone back to working at the office instead of from home.

Very few wear facemasks, and I believe the few that do are German tourists. It's really weird to wear a facemask now.

As far as I can tell and what I notice everything went back to normal months ago. There is no change.
It's wait and see what's going to happen this winter season and if government will come up with all their restrictions again.


We have bigger worries now than the pandemic. Maybe not so much in the US, but certainly over here, caused by the Ukraine war. The many Ukrainian refugees we have to shelter, my handyman and his family are refugees as well.
Because of the war gas, electricity, food and petrol prices have sky-rocketed and we haven't seen the end of this increase in prices yet. Food is at least 30% - 50% more expensive.
Government gives extra money to people on low income to cover the high utility cost, but concerning food you're on your own, even when you have a low income.
Nov & Dec everyone will get $190 paid per month to help cover high utility cost. Thank goodness I still have a contract with fixed prices but that ends in July 2023 so I'm putting the money I get in my savings account. But many people are in trouble and aren't even heating their homes properly anymore as they can't afford it.
A few weeks ago we had an 11 yr old kid pass out at school because he hadn't eaten in 3 days. His parents ran out of money...
That stuff is unheard of. It's insane!

This is what is on everyone's mind over here. Focus isn't on Covid as we currently have other things to worry about: paying the rent/mortgage, getting ourselves & our children fed etc. More and more are getting in trouble with that.
Almost like getting thrown back into the Dark Ages.

i deal with hundreds of customers a day, work got busier with Covid, company cut huge amount of hours, and now 4-5 days I work entire dept by myself without help, so customers find empty shelves, as impossible to keep up as a 1 man show, before Covid we had 2 full time people and a part time every night. so increase number of customers, then cut a lot of hours, perfect sense.

thats my biggest change. work without help, dealing with irate customers, with both hands tied, 1 person at a time, with people buying product faster than can be stocked. it gets filled in mornings, but lots get ignored, and its changed day by day what product is ignored, as not enough man hours to stock and wait on customers. no customer complaints wont help, as long as big bosses are making million dollar bonuses, they will keep on under-staffing

Good:
As a first grade teacher, I'll never again take for granted being able to attend school in person without being confined to our "bubbles". And not having to spend the whole day reminding my kids to pull their mask up over their nose, is pretty amazing.

I recently flew to/from Nepal, and I saw that nearly everyone on the plane was wearing a mask except for me. Not one person asked me to put one on. When I asked about it, I learned that the majority of Nepalese people were not vaccinated (they didn't have access to it). The airline staff all just assumed that because I am western that I'm vaccinated. I mean I am, but that was another reminder of how blessed I am, and not to take things like that for granted.


Bad:
I actually enjoyed being quarantined. I think it made me even less likely to want to socialize now. It was a great excuse to stay holed up (which is my comfort zone), and now it's hard for me to make myself go out with any regularity.

I got used to working online. I would actually really like a job I could do remotely.

It got used to having groceries delivered, and I got used to ordering everything online. Now I never go in person to the grocery store anymore, and I hate to go shopping in person.

X2

This is me...except I now work remotely. I love it but it's really hard to make myself get out sometimes.

I haven't seen any changes where I live. That's a good thing.

When the next pandemic hits us, it will be a test whether we have made the best change.

I am sorry, but I do not see any positive changes caused by the dreadful Covid pandemic.

The UK health service is not as it was, inflation 10% and rising, and a recession seems to be on the horizon, no doubt other factors are contributing but in my opinion the pandemic is one of the major causes of why we are where we are, here in the UK. You cannot stop everything for months on end and expect to return to normality when switching back on again, this is going to take years to recover from as a society.

What is good and positive that came from it and was direly needed in the world:
More and more people waking up and saying "no more!"
People taking back their power, or wanting to do that, growing increasingly fed up with the limiting narrative of government. Beginning to see that the influence of the EU is way way way too big and that they're ramming things down our throats that are doing our country in.
Not just Covid related but everything that made our country great and wonderful to live in.
More and more people are seeing now government doesn't give a chit about us or anything except for their own agenda and bank account.
How they cut back on healthcare, something that began in the 80s- and let to substantial problems during the pandemic.
The same with schools, kids not being allowed to go to school and after months showing serious signs of stress because they couldn't go out and about, hang out with friends, missed out on exams and so on.

People are waking up. Very likely the exact opposite of what the ones in power were aiming for, but this is the good that came from it.
And it is what is needed, has been needed for years but it's like the proverb, "Soft surgeons make stinking wounds."
It almost always takes people being put with their back against the wall for them to take the blinders off.
THAT's what has happened to a vast group of people.

There are more and more people unwilling to again go with any of the insane restrictions that were forced upon us before. More and more that chose to get those crap shots now say, "I am NOT going to take more!"
It is becoming clear now what the effects of these shots are. My ex has serious ailments because of them, and there are many more.

It's waking up and opening the eyes what it brought us.
And sure certain things took a serious hit like restaurants, businesses, healthcare maybe (not sure actually), but even that is good as it makes space for the new.
The old is what has been dictated and forced upon us for thousands of years and needs to go. Change is never easy.
And I know you won't see it this way, that's okay. This is about the bigger picture, not about small scale and personal level. That's why this event was global. It's a big picture and a big shift for mankind.

Observations:

-Marked decrease in job professionalism. Mostly in public service jobs at the employee-customer level, which is what many consumers notice.
-/- there are probably many in-house factors which contribute to this including...
~ employers attempting to maintain or exceed prior profits by reducing staff
~ employers reducing stock levels
~ loss of benefits and incentives to employees
~ reduced number of employees with longer shifts and less time off.
~ infrequent pay raises with higher responsibility
+ people accepting jobs they really don't want to do because their preferred jobs are now over-manned. A lost of professionals lost years of seniority when laid off during the pandemic. Bills piled up and they were forced to take any job available to make ends meet and now they are stuck in a rut, unable to climb back out.

-Healthcare has ramped up aggressive campaigning. offering less as 'more' and selling it as a new benefit.
~ the VA healthcare system in my area now floods my email with 'advertisements of what they think I need. Yet, they pushed my appointment back from Oct to next February. They 'push' tele-appointments as if that is a 'good' thing. Not sure about you but I prefer to actually 'see' my Dr in person.
~ Signa Medicare Advantage+ has flooded my mailbox with incentives and 'benefits' trying to convince me to make multiple appointments yet when I call my Signa PCP I get no answer. I've even seen Rx drugs on 'sale'? Pharmacy billboards are popping up.
~ Both healthcare systems I use campaigned a 'warning' about a "Monkey Pox" outbreak trying to increase patient visits thru more 'pandemic' fearmongering. My kids have told me they even instituted mandatory screening for Monkey Pox in my grandchildren's schools. That was 8 months ago.
People didn't fall for it and now, magically, the Monkey Pox scare has disappeared.

Personally, I don't watch broadcast TV or listen to Broadcast Radio. I'm almost willing to be both are filled with fearmongering and aggressive advertising.

-During the Lunch and Dinner hours I've noticed local fast food restaurant drive-thru lines are wrapped around the buildings and often down the street, yet the lobby dining areas are open to the public.
~ Normal eat-in restaurants all now have online ordering and lines at their new pick-up windows yet they are all open for in-house dining.
~ Many really good restaurants have closed during the pandemic and still have not reopened. Hell, the local Pizza Hut is only open on weekends now (most likely because during the pandemic they has a huge rush and their quality went down causing people to no longer trust them){I ordered a pie there and it was not only cold when I got it, the toppings were lopsided like they just didn't care, so I stopped buying pizza from them}.
~ then you have the fact fast food prices have doubled.

-Dollar Tree no longer has anything for $1. Its all now $1.25 or more and they scrapped off the Dollar reference from their sign.
~ Rent went way up
~ Electricity went up
~ Water went up
~ Clothing prices went up
~ Used car prices went up (Most used car dealers WANT you to buy on a loan)
~ Bank Savings interest rates stayed the same but loan interest rates went up
~ Internet ISP went up (I don't use cable, phone or satellite services)
~ Nearly everything you can spend money for has gone up, yet...
! My fixed income has stayed the same all year and the last raise (Jan 1) equaled out to $2 per day.

I look at other people in the stores and they seem to be oblivious to the fact everything has gone up in cost so much, so fast.

The 'Powers That Be' have failed to realize this rubber band can only stretch so far till it breaks.


Fortunately, I'm personally not hurting yet, but I do see it coming unless things start to change for the better.

Anyone who can't see the changes is either in denial or oblivious to the world around them. When it does rear its ugly head, it will probably be too late, too far gone for them to actually do anything about it. Then you will also be dealing with civil unrest and panic.

Wearing Mask only during visiting the hospital & health care center, rest the life is going same as usual.
It's looking like nothing had happened and the life is going as the normal way it use to be.
Cleanliness is essential an basic.