It’s now legal for me to see a doctor over zoom, or talk to a doctor over the phone, and be prescribed treatment. That’s a win. Yes, there are some things where it’s better for the doctor to actually see you, but you know what, quite a lot can be diagnosed without a face-to-face, and there’s a LOT of cost savings (in your time) to being able to see a doctor without going to the doctor’s office when it’s NOT needed.
There are a bunch of other things we’ve learned to do remotely, with cost savings. Some of my hobbies now have remote options and I’m actually seeing more of some European and Canadian friends then I did in non-pandemic years.
I definitely see the normalization of mask-wearing as a win for society. I hope it sticks this time. I don’t want to wear a mask all the time, and I don’t want everyone else to do that, either. But I hope that a lot more people will wear masks a lot more often going forward.
Maybe I’m just weird, but I’ve always been more squicked out by people coughing on me than by shaking hands, or touching the bathroom door. I don’t really even like people breathing on me.
The level is too low now, and a lot of companies are whinging about the unfairness of it rather than raising wages.