re: I hoped last summer’s heat would be a one off, but it doesn’t appear it was.

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our new normal

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This phrase was the worst thing to come out of the Covid pandemic

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The worst thing to come out of the COVID pandemic is people who just started paying attention thinking everything started due to COVID.

Just go to Wikipedia to see how old that phrase is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_normal

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In 1918, Henry A. Wise Wood posted a dilemma,

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To consider the problems before us we must divide our epoch into three periods, that of war, that of transition, that of the new normal, which undoubtedly will supersede the old. The questions before us, therefore, are, broadly, two: How shall we pass from war to the new normal with the least jar, in the shortest time? In what respect should the new normal be shaped to differ from the old?

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Robert A. Heinlein used the phrase in his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, with a character telling lunar colonists:

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Citizens, requests may reach you through your comrade neighbors. I hope you will comply willingly; it will speed the day when I can bow out and life can get back to normal — a new normal, free of the Authority, free of guards, free of troops stationed on us, free of passports and searches and arbitrary arrests.

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Heck, there was a short-lived sitcom in 2012/2013 called The New Normal