More headwinds to face before return to ‘normal’YOURWORD

• Published date: 10 February 2022
• Publication title: Mountain Scene

However, we do need to improve planning and better manage our financial, mental health and physical health

We need to co-exist with COVID, or risk being an outlier to the rest of the world.

Pandemics aren’t new — the most famous being the Bubonic Plague (1346-1353) — but, over the past century, there have been many pandemics of varying degrees of contagiousness and lethality.

Interestingly, research into the psychology of past pandemics has shown the same human responses have repeated.

During the Spanish flu, for example, merchants suffered hardship because of staff absenteeism and shoppers were either too ill or too frightened to venture out to the stores, while panic buying and anti-vaccination sentiment were also features of past pandemics.

The personal financial impact of a pandemic can be as severe and stressful as the infection itself.

Covid’s tested everyone’s resolve and brought out the best, and worst, in people.

While the stoicism of many has been impressive, there are exhausted frontline care workers, and hardworking families and wage earners who have had to take pay cuts to...