After this week’s announcements that we are winding back ‘Plan B’ measures, it seems we may, just finally, be entering the end-game of the pandemic.
That is certainly not to say that things are ‘over’, far from it in fact. However, it does seem that we may just be starting to see the beginning of the end of this oh-so-strange time in our lives.
As I have commented before, I think many people found 2021 just as hard, if not harder than 2020. Human beings are actually fairly good at dealing with disasters when they are presented as real-life, happening right now events. What they are not so good at dealing with is uncertainty about the future and 2021 had that in spades. In my conversations with clients, staff members, peers in the profession, friends, and family, I have detected the fatigue running through the national psyche.
The good news at this juncture is that we seem to have turned a corner. When the initial data around Omicron started to become clear, I hypothesised that perhaps this could actually be a turning point in the pandemic (viruses tend to become more infectious, but less virulent overtime after all – it’s what they need to do to survive) and it seems that this has been borne out in reality.
The rail companies reported a large increase in traffic yesterday after what was the first day after the ‘work from home’ guidance ended and it seems that many of the large financial institutions in the city have proclaimed that people shall return to their desks immediately. This is in stark contrast to previous occasions where the work from home message has been relaxed where companies seem to have taken it upon themselves to continue with the working from home regime, despite there being no government rules or guidance stipulating it. Perhaps yet another sign that this time it is ‘different’.
I personally am looking forward to the city coming back to life. Having invested a huge amount of blood, sweat, and tears in building a business, I can sympathise with those hospitality and leisure businesses that have struggled so much in the pandemic and they too will no doubt be delighted to see more people wandering past their doors (and hopefully coming in of course).
On a practical level for our business, it restores client choice around meetings either in the office or on Zoom and people can now choose what works best for them, rather than this being mandated for us.
Now, of course, covid could have another sting in the tail. There could yet be another variant that is more serious that causes a setback on our path back to the new normality, however hopefully that will not be the case.
I am sure these past 2 years will go down in history as an inflection point where some things just changed forever – some for better, some for worse. There will be plenty of time for the ‘after-action review’ and I am sure we will all learn lessons from this most testing of times, but that is the subject for another blog. For now, enjoy the return to some degree of normality (again) – I think we all need it!
