The new normal has already arrived, but how are we assuming the changes? And it is that while the coronavirus has spread at high speed, it has taken us time to adapt to the situation. Luis Miller, from the Institute of Public Policies and Goods (IPBP-CSIC), explains that social behaviors cannot be changed so quickly. ” We have the feeling of going slower than we would need to control the virus .”
To face covered
Something similar happened with the masks, already essential. Throughout the pandemic, “there have been patterns that confused the population,” says Pampa G. Molina, chief editor of the public scientific news agency SINC. The geologist Teresa Moreno, from the Institute for Environmental Diagnosis and Water Studies (IDAEA-CSIC), argues that at first it was due to a “problem of availability” since “there were no investigations to sustain that the pathogen spread through the air ” . Now we know that they are essential to avoid contagion and not be infected, because the virus “is like an aerosol, like other particles in the air, and it can travel two meters easily; hence the interpersonal safety distance ”, adds Moreno.
Our elders, in the spotlight
With the older population, all the precautions to take are few: mortality from COVID-19 is very high in those over eighty years of age . And the fact that Spain is one of the oldest countries in the world, according to sociologist Diego Ramiro, from the Institute of Economy, Geography and Demography (IEGD-CSIC), is key to understanding what has happened to the pandemic. Ramiro recalls that some 322,000 Spaniards live in residences, and that the average age in these centers is 86 years. In addition, “with the mortality that has occurred, about 0.7-0.8 years of life expectancy will be lost, more in men than in women”, predicts Ramiro.
Walk-by-home offices
In the workplace, teleworking has been the great bet of this pandemic. It has brought great benefits, such as lower pollution levels and savings in transport times. However, María Ángeles Durán, also a sociologist at the IEGD-CSIC, indicates that it is not true that working at home is an advantage for women because that way they can reconcile. “What they can do is add two jobs.” And that, according to her, has led to “extraordinary stress.” In addition, new employment inequalities have emerged. With the so-called serological passport, companies seek to hire, preferably, people who have had the disease. “ It doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not. How are you going to avoid it? Before they asked you to be vaccinated and now, as there is no vaccine, they ask you for a certificate of antibodies “, argues Durán. Even so, the sociologist says that they will need luck to find someone who responds to that profile if, according to the latest national seroprevalence study, only 5.2% of the Spanish population has had contact with the coronavirus.
