There is no getting back to normal. This is a highly infectious disease with a significant hospitalisation rate.
The dichotomy of choosing “the economy” over people’s lives is also a false one, and attempting to prioritise the former over the latter is also a false economy.
Had countries locked down properly and for long enough in an attempt to eliminate the virus, you would now have a better economy as well as fewer deaths or any perceived need to sacrifice people—just as New Zealand had.
Instead you have politicians wilfully ignoring scientific advise because they’re so ideologically wedded to neoliberalism and “the economy”, which is talked of as some mathematical abstraction measured only in GDP (basically aggregate spending).
They’re also incapable of conceiving people having an income and spending without actually working—which is well within the realm of possibility given advancements in automation, roboticisation, and the fact many actual jobs are already meaningless and serve only to provide an income in order to spend (and raise GDP).
We could have avoided much of the stress and all the anti-lockdown and anti-masks protests had our idiots in power simply assured that no one was going to go hungry or homeless during the pandemic. Instead there’s uncertaintly, chaotic communication, and constant rule and guideline changes that try to control the virus rather than get rid of it.