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More troubling still, a significant section of the public is embracing lockdown as a lifestyle. A recent study revealed that a majority – 54 per cent – felt they would miss aspects of lockdown. This acquiescence to, or even celebration of, lockdown often coexists with a reluctance to get on the commuter train or get back to the office. It has become fashionable to declare that Covid has taught us to work ‘better’ or ‘smarter’. ‘Professional-services firms need to work smarter in “new normal”’, writes one consultant, before adding that ‘the professional-services industry will be irrevocably altered by the Covid-19 pandemic’. Words like ‘irrevocable’, ‘unavoidable’ and ‘inevitable’ convey that all too familiar fatalistic message: ‘There is no alternative.’ Others happily suggest that masks and social distancing will be necessary for years to come.
Underpinning such a fatalistic acceptance of the omnipresent risk of viral contagion is the absence of any belief in humanity’s capacity to solve the problems it confronts. Instead, we are encouraged to make a virtue of lockdown and even to embrace the ‘lockdown lifestyle’.
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