THE GRADUAL RETURN TO NORMALITY

After several months of quarantine we had the opportunity

to return to normal little by little
with many restrictions
The pandemic has us in a kind of suspended state. Our way
of living, working and interacting with people has changed,
we are readjusting our lives to enter what experts call "a
new normal" that we still do not fully understand and we are
trying to define it in the best possible way. The “new
normality” is, or should be, a time in which people apply a
series of measures, fundamentally health, to avoid
becoming infected or contagious, while carrying out some
daily activities, particularly essential ones. Therefore, this
new normal is unfortunately restrictive.

The question that arises is: When will we get out of this
sense of exceptionality and return to living in a way that we
consider "normal"? Are we close or far from this
happening?
A more or less certain moment is not yet in sight that will
signal us a return to a normality similar to how we lived it
before. However, there are two central conditions that must
be met for this to happen and, hopefully, in the short term.
In the first place, vaccinating a large percentage of the
world's population seems to be a clearly necessary
condition to reduce the number of infected and deaths from
COVID-19 and eventually stop the pandemic, but at the rate
we are going, will it be possible to achieve effective
coverage and wide enough? The availability, distribution
and all the logistics involved in the application of the
vaccine have become a real headache.

To these points, already complicated in themselves, others

are added that could have a significant impact on the
achievement of adequate coverage and cause the presence
of "pockets" of unvaccinated population groups that become
invisible in the face of national statistics and that could put
in "check" the efforts to control the pandemic through
vaccination. These “other” factors are: corruption,
improvisation, apathy/misinformation, and anti-vaccine
movements.

On the other hand, time is against you. While there is

greater circulation of the virus, at the community level and
for a longer time, the possibilities of the appearance of new
variants and even strains, which evade the immune
response produced by the vaccine and which may be more
virulent, are considerably greater.
Another aspect that must be highlighted and never left
aside is the sustained compliance with the mitigation
measures. Which even with the advent of vaccines, is more
important than it was a year ago. Physical distancing, the
use of masks and the application of quarantines in cases
where necessary, have been measures that have strongly
affected our way of life and have caused fatigue in the
population. However, systematic and widespread
compliance with these measures clearly reduces the speed
of transmission of the virus.

Well-designed and contextually appropriate communication

strategies that support and reinforce compliance with these
measures need to be sustained and systematic, considering
a wide diversity of audiences of both vaccinated (even with
full doses) and unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people.
The temporality of these measures will be prolonged and
must be part of our "normality".
The outlook seems bleak and ups and downs, the same as
the curves of daily cases of the pandemic. However, unlike
last year, we feel closer to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Certain countries are showing that the pandemic can be
controlled, some of them are even in our region.
 First people started dating with the card number with the
last card number
 Even to enter the markets you needed to have a license
to enter
 The cars also began to leave only for the last license
plate number
 Little by little, people stopped complying with these
regulations and began to go out any day
 Classes became blended
 After a few months they became face-to-face but with
biosecurity measures
So far we are still in eye classes but with the respective
biosecurity measures, Although people no longer respect
these measures