Gross Things We Did Without Thinking Before Coronavirus That We Might Never Do Again

Imagine a world without social distancing, where people are allowed to freely mingle as they choose, and where the threat of a deadly respiratory virus is such a remote possibility that you'd barely think about it.

We're talking - of course - about the time before March 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic struck the world and changed our way of life, perhaps forever.

Well, people have been looking backwards to some of the things that we considered completely normal then that we now recognise were always actually kind of gross.

Here's just a few things that could be changed for good.

Let's start with food.

Heading out to the pub and smashing open a bag of crisps on the table for everyone to eat. Those days are probably gone.

Offering a Malteser to a friend straight out of the bag? That's a big no-no too.

Don't even get started on birthday cakes. Have we really all been eating cake covered in someone's spit for years and years?

Of course we have.

In public, there's a whole list of things that were commonplace in the pre-Covid world, but wouldn't dream of now.

Not that you shouldn't have been doing this anyway, but everyone should sure as hell be wiping down gym equipment after using it.

There'll be no more kissing random strangers out and about. Whilst it's great in principle, you've no idea where they've been or what they could have.

Even shaking hands is off the table for now, at least.

Imagine passing your phone to someone in the street to take a picture of you at a landmark. In the past, your biggest worry would have been them running off with it, now it's the invisible biological stuff they could have on their mitts.

Getting in an UberPool car to go somewhere? Off the table for the foreseeable, for definite.

Admittedly, Uber has actually stopped this service since last March, so you couldn't even if you wanted to.

Want to get public transport? That's going to be a whole lot different too. Masks and hand sanitiser the order of the day.

Sharing a cigarette with a friend is a hard pass too. To be fair, it's better that you don't smoke at all, given the myriad health problems that can cause on top of the coronavirus contamination risk.

In brief, life is going to be irreparably changed when this is all over - whenever that might be - but we'll still find a way to enjoy everything, even if it seems a bit weird to begin with.

So long as we're all being sensible and keeping safe, some sort of normality will eventually break out once again.

Just maybe keep the candles separate from the birthday cake in future, right?