I’m back to going in to the office in downtown Chicago every day, and I still see some old stickers on floors (and on sidewalks) in public places, showing where to stand to maintain social distancing.
Bottles and dispensers of hand sanitizer are still common; in my office, every restroom and every conference room still has a massive pump bottle of sanitizer.
On the commuter train, I still see a few signs that say “Masks are not required, but are welcome.”
When we opened back up to F2F classes I had to arrange my classroom with one-way aisles, with direction markers on the floor just like grocery stores had. Admin being the cheap bastards that they are, the “markers” we were given was just a roll of cheap old-school masking tape. We had to make little arrows on the floor using the masking tape.
Now, 3+ years later, the masking tape is long gone and my classroom arrangement is back to pre-Covid normal. However the masking tape left some sort of residue on the floor that I cannot get off. I’ve tried Goo Gone, WD40, alcohol, nail polish remover, and good old elbow grease. It’s no longer sticky but the ghostly image of those damn arrows remain on my floor. I hate it.
Our principal wants all the high-traffic touch surfaces like doorknobs and light switches and tables and chairs and faucets and toilets and and and and in the whole building given a quick wipe down with Clorox wipes at the end of each day. She claims its to help prevent covid spread. I suspect it’s a ruse to keep the kids busy at the end of the day when boredom and restlessness is at its peak. I’m all for it because hey, any port in a storm.
I’m required to keep hand sanitizer, disposable masks, gloves, and clorox wipes in my classroom. Only the clorox wipes get used by the students.
Several local restaurants still have marquees with some sort of signage stating “dining room now open!” or “now open for dine-in and carry-out!” Again, this shit is 3+ years out of date by now. A lot of local restaurants have permanently adopted the “single sheet of laminated paper” menu rather than the old style which was several pages that opened like a book (I don’t know what that style is called). This is a change that I prefer as it makes perusing the menu easier.
A couple of local restaurants closed during the shutdown portion of the pandemic in 2020 and never reopened. It’s a shame because those were the good ones. It seems like that restaurants that serve garbage lived on.
I do occasionally see signs in restaurants and doctors offices reminding people to maintain social distancing etiquette. The restaurants, of course, no longer have their dining rooms arranged to promote or even allow for social distancing.
A few (very few, but not zero) places still have the plastic plexiglass screens at check-out registers, separating the cashier from the customer. Of all the covid changes this is the one that personally bothered me the most because I cannot for the life of me hear the cashier when those damn screens are in place. My hearing just isn’t good enough.
Nobody wears masks anymore, not even in the local hospital or Dr. offices. There might be more hand sanitizer stations in public areas than there were before covid, or maybe I’m just noticing them more. I know my local grocery store and Dr. office had them before covid and of course they still have them today. I don’t use them (I carry my own) so couldn’t tell you if they are regularly refilled or not. I’m guessing the ones in medical offices are, the local Try N Save not so much.
There’s this one lady at work , started wearing a mask a few weeks ago. Excellent idea!
Nope she keeps it below her nose, irks me why wear one? Covid ghost ain’t dead yet
That did remind me, there are a couple of places near my office that still have those, including a Popeyes chicken restaurant, and a mom-and-pop convenience store. The latter still also has some hand-made signs on the newspaper rack, indicating that, due to COVID, they don’t want people to leaf through the newspapers without buying a copy.
(Yes, they still have a newspaper rack, and apparently still sell a few newspapers; they’re located just outside of a commuter train station, and that may be part of the reason why.)
Another one that I just thought of: the healthcare network to which my GP and my endocrinologist belong has an online portal for doing check-ins prior to an office visit. That portal asks about various health things, and it still includes a question about recent travel (both out-of-state, and abroad); I’m pretty sure that that’s a remnant of the early days of COVID.
Before visiting my dentist, I still get a form to fill out that includes the question “Have you recently visited a country where COVID is prevalent?”
My phone doesn’t do that.
Of course, I also can’t afford to eat out often. So the issue so far hasn’t come up in my life.
Are there any countries where it isn’t?
(I’d have to answer that one “I’m living in one.” Which, if it’s an online form, may not be possible.)
A lot of places have QR stickers on the door so you can get acquainted with their Covid-19 plans. Good to know.
I still keep hand sanitizer in my classroom for my students and it still gets used on occassion.
I’ve been told anybody you see chin masking in this day and age is doing it because they’re talking on a Bluetooth headset and don’t want their boss to know.
When I went in for doctor appointments in January the staff all wore masks, although patients were not required to do so. Also, when I checked in I was asked if I had tested positive for Covid in the past ten days.
A convention I went to in February required all attendees to wear masks at all times.
The public transit busses still have the plastic shields around the driver area, although passengers are no longer required to wear masks,
Yeah, mask mandates for medical personnel are back around here. That’s not a “ghost” of covid, it’s a continuation of health practices that are useful when respiratory infections are common. And i see a lot more hand sanitizer stations, but people use them.
On the other hand, an annoying ghost of covid is that many restaurants don’t have paper menus any more. And i see a lot of signage for distancing that no one pays any attention to.
Yes. Cloth masks were slightly useful when everyone wore one, but their effectiveness at protecting you is minimal at best. (They are someone useful at protecting other people FROM your germs, but not nearly as good as a surgical mask.) I agree with the advise to buy a few n95s that fit you, to keep around for if you feel you need protection. But I’d get rid of the dust-magnet cloth mask hanging in your car whether or not you replace it with something better.
During the worst of COVID many local restaurants closed for a while. When they reopened they had scaled back hours. This has persisted. Many are closed on Mondays still, some on Mondays and Tuesdays.
That used to be common. The ‘everybody’s open all the time’ mindset was pretty recent; and maybe it was temporary.
None of the places where i used to buy lobster in ginger and scallion sauce still carry it. They’ve all scaled back their menus.
Covid is still real to me. I caught the new variant in early Dec. That makes three times since 2021.
I still have several masks. Several of my doctors have the plexiglass at the front desk to protect staff.
I haven’t seen the “stand here” circles on the floor in a couple years.
My local, go-to Chinese restaurant went to take-out and delivery only and is still that way. They have a table parked across the entry where someone greets me and take my order and credit card, and then delivers my food to me. I can see the dining room inside but as far as I know, it’s never open. I suspect most of their business has always been take-out and delivery.
I suspect the orthopedist’s scheduling app is sending those texts, and nobody in the office knows about them. Or has the ability to stop them from happening.
Just like taking down social distancing signs, it takes effort by somebody in an IT capacity to alter how your computer systems are configured. Maybe somebody there could do that, or maybe it costs $500 to get tech support out to do that.
So the office manager ignores the problem, confident the customers are ignoring the messages too.
Yeah, many of these things are “New Normal” behavior.
The “Ghost” word in the OP implies that since Covid is gone, these are unneeded now. Covid’s still around and so are introverts, and I love having space between me and the unwashed masses…
Oh, and I appreciate the free sanitizer (“Holy Water”, heh heh). Whenever I’m shopping, my hands get dirty, or at least scuzzy … especially because I can’t resist plowing through a lot of old books and used LPs, and getting some of that “dust of ages” off feels SO good…
I think I’ll heed this advice. LOL
I’ll put a couple of quality masks in the glove compartment just in case.