Both our economy and our healthcare system, our president has assured us repeatedly, are unlike anything in human history. “And they are coming back,” he repeats—“and quite quickly.” I’m not so sure. For two reasons, the freedoms we inherit on the other side of this tragedy will be altogether different from what we experienced coming in.

Normalcy. What would you trade to get it back? How deep into your pockets would you dive to regain the life you had just three months ago?

Forget it! It’s not only that, as North Carolina writer Thomas Wolfe said years ago, “You can’t go home again.” It’s not just that the past is a superficially or nostalgically different place. The past, we are discovering during this incredible “reopening” process, will prove to have been profoundly different in the fundamentals. But we will not be returning to those fundamentals.

Both our economy and our healthcare system, our president has assured us repeatedly, are unlike anything in human history. “And they are coming back,” he repeats—“and quite quickly.”

I’m not so sure. For two reasons, the freedoms we inherit on the other side of this tragedy will be altogether different from what we experienced coming in.

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