We’re desperate to get back to our pre-pandemic lives

Soon, we’ll be able to go out in the world again.

But will we feel like flying in a plane? Going to a concert or baseball game? Having dinner at our favourite restaurant?

You bet. We are desperate to get back out there, says Larry Smith, an economics professor at University of Waterloo, who specializes in innovation and is director of the university’s Problem Lab.

“Humans are intensely social beings,” he said. That’s especially true of 17- to 22-year-olds for whom “your social life is how you figure out who you are.”

For these people during the past few weeks, “the whole point of your life has come to a crashing halt.”

And yet we’ve behaved ourselves, more or less.

We’ve heeded the warnings from medical authorities. We’ve told ourselves that sitting at home is a small price to pay for cutting down on the number of people who get sick or die from the COVID-19 virus.

But it’s time to give ourselves some credit. We’ve made a bigger sacrifice than it seems.

And as the worst of the sickness fades away in the next few weeks, there will be the promised gradual reopening of the economy and society.

That will happen sooner rather than later, said Smith.

“This natural pent-up demand is going to assert itself, potentially with a vengeance,” he said.

“I think a lot of us were suffering” from losing connection with others.

“There’s a limit, possibly, to our patience.”

It’s not clear whether we’ll be getting out in the same way as we did before. We will still be measuring our need to return to normal life, and to save what’s left of the economy, against the health consequences of a near-certain second wave of the disease, caused by that same return to normal?

Restaurants may reopen, but with fewer tables, spaced further apart and the need to disinfect between customers. Will that cut into their already narrow profit margins so much that they can’t make money? Will they still need as many servers and kitchen staff?

Concert halls and stadiums may reopen, but if there has to be social distancing (imagine being seated in every other row, with two or three seats between you and the next person), will the ticket revenue pay the bills?

Air travel, which has always involved being squished beside strangers with no way to escape, could also have trouble adjusting, Smith said.

Things we did before without even thinking will now be a calculated risk.

You might be willing to take a chance on getting sick if you’re going to drive to your annual family reunion, because you miss them so much.

But getting on a plane for a vacation might make you pause. Is it worth the fear of the person next to you coughing all the way?

The pandemic is two problems in one: a health problem; but also an economic one with the sudden, violent contraction of the economy.

“When there’s adversity, the old and the weak go first,” said Smith.

Two groups of businesses come to his mind. First, retail enterprises without a strong online presence, which had been struggling for a long time before this.

Second, startups, which are operated mostly by young people. These entrepreneurs are “hugely vulnerable in these kinds of situations” in part because they haven’t had time to build networks or a customer base.

Smith has been lecturing to packed halls for decades about economic and social issues. What surprised him most about the past six weeks was how “swiftly and smoothly” we moved from old normal to new normal.

“The precedent of how you can get a whole society, voluntarily, to march in the same direction, may give us inspiration.” he said.

If we can do it for the health of a country, then perhaps we can also do it for the health of the planet.