Did the Year 2020 Change Us Forever?

The restaurants—can it really be the case that for several months they were shuttered by edict?—are packed tight, the subways tighter, and almost no one wears a mask in either place, not even those of us who swore to keep wearing one in the future, though the virus continues to mutate and spread. The political trajectory of the country appears to be set on the same catastrophic path it was on before the pandemic. One can look up in the evening and see more darkened office buildings, where once sweet monitors shed their aquarium glow, but on the New York streets the last remnants of the pandemic are the ingeniously improvised sidewalk-dining sheds. Nobody knows how much longer they will last.