Will a COVID-19 vaccine save us from a permanent new normal?

Wearing masks will become more widely seen

Question: Will a COVID-19 vaccine save us from a permanent new normal?
Position‹2 of 2: A vaccine will not erase the changes to our daily lives
Argument‹4 of 4: Wearing masks will become more widely seen

Before the pandemic, wearing masks was an oddity in most Western countries. Even after a vaccine is developed, wearing a mask will remain more common.

The argument

After months of restrictions, life has effectively changed for all of us. Wearing masks, and indeed, seeing people wear them has become the norm. This kind of behavior was common in many Asian countries even before COVID-19. These behaviors have been traced back to previous epidemics in these nations. In the early 2000s, the SARS and MERS pandemics in Asia raised awareness and highlighted the importance of a quick response and contagion prevention. These have been seen as some of the factors behind their lower death toll compared to Western nations. Having dealt with other coronavirus in the last decades, Asian nations have much to teach their Western counterparts. Maybe wearing masks to prevent the spread of diseases and protect the people around us will be one of the things we learn from this pandemic.

Premises

[P1]After months of restrictions, wearing and seeing masks has become the norm in the West. [P2] This was already common in Asian countries, a habit traced to the SARS and MERS epidemics that helped lower their death tolls. [P3] Having learned the value of masks for contagion prevention, Western societies are likely to keep the habit. [C] Therefore, because mask-wearing will become more widely seen, a vaccine will not erase the changes to our daily lives.

Counter-arguments

Western countries saw an epidemic in the 1920s. During that time, there was a pushback against mask wearing, not dissimilar to what we are seeing this year. In Western countries, the last epidemic did not encourage mask wearing to become commonplace. It is unlikely that this one will.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A norm sustained by legal requirement during an active outbreak is not evidence of a lasting habit; the premise records compliance under restrictions rather than a preference that would outlive them. [Rejecting P2] The comparison cuts against the premise as much as for it: the habit took hold in places that had lived through SARS and MERS, whereas the Western experience of an earlier epidemic was followed by pushback against masks rather than by their adoption. [Rejecting P3] Adopting a practice under an acute threat does not show it will be kept once the threat recedes, and the premise names no mechanism — habit, regulation or social expectation — by which the behaviour would persist.