UNMASKING: What Have We Learned From The Pandemic? What Changes Must We Keep?

We may finally be coming towards the end of the pandemic. Not only can you help end it by getting vaccinated if you haven’t yet- I’ve had both shots and nothing bad happened to me as a result, btw, I wouldn’t ask anyone else to get the shots if I hadn’t- and as we move towards the next normal, here are the things I think we’ve learned from this situation that we must never forget, and the changes we’ve made as a society due to the pandemic that need to be continued and expanded as we move on:

1) If people have health concerns about their workplace, we as a society have to respect and learn from those concerns and be willing to adjust the nature and boundaries of the workplace- working from home must be accepted as a permanent option if people feel that’s what they have to do and if it is at all possible for them to do so, the use of software like Zoom to communicate needs to be something that goes on, and people who must return to a specific physical workplace at a specific location need to be given a far greater say in how that workplace is run- they need to be heeded when they see dangers, they need to be believed when they say they’ve been victimized in the workplace, and really, everyone who works needs to be included in at least some of the decisions about what their workplace does, how it does it, and what the expectations of them as work partners is to be.

This also means we should be willing to look towards the day when the manager, the supervisor and the individual or corporate owner, as we used…