When analyzing the great breakdowns and changes in history, the great depressions and crises encountered by all humanity will be seen as the most important reasons. COVID-19 is just such a crisis the whole world is currently facing. This world-wide crisis references the process wherein history is built or written in a particular way. These different times we live in are characterized by great risks alongside their great benefits. The most dangerous of these are likely the epidemics that can spread fast and effectively influence the whole world. Therefore, the world is at greater risk for epidemics, and the feelings of security have been eroded by the tunnels of fear that have formed. In the COVID-19 process, three main predictions have become prominent. Foremost is the prediction that the epidemic will affect not only healthcare systems but all parts of life. Second is the assessment that nothing will be like it was. Third is the claim that people will go on with life under the new normal. Clearly new investigations into these predictions will question several issues that will change as a consequence. These questions will most likely focus on critical components and dimensions of life such as economic, cultural, judicial, political, religious, familial, and cultural identity issues; healthcare and education systems; international affairs; and technological/digital life. This article, whose purpose is to discuss the multi-dimensional sociology of COVID-19 based on the new normal, will deal with early evaluations and debates on the epidemic’s effects. The points implied through the multi-sociological aspects of the pandemic are the sociological, psycho-sociological, political, and international sides of life; the economic order; and education systems, as well as healthcare and disease systems. The pandemic and its influences over these will be evaluated in terms of sociological imaginings. The interpretations will focus on the developments and current interactions in relation to the conceptualization of the new normal.

Healthcare systems have been the first of the fields to be deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in China and has since ravaged the whole world. In particularly, the pioneer countries of the European Union with primarily private sectors and the USA have had scattered responses. In other words, they have not been able to counter the crisis the pandemic has caused. Therefore, these places have the highest levels of negative effects. The impacts COVID-19 has had on healthcare systems have revealed some issues regarding dimensions and components in the sector. Healthcare systems, just like throughout history, have been remarkable for both providing and maintaining today’s social order and cultural structure. As such they have critical interactions with social order regarding the circumstances of an era.

This pandemic, which directly threatens human health as well as many aspects of societies, naturally continues to influence many other components of social life, along with its sociological effects on social life. For instance, individuals who are unable to return to their previously normal behaviors and habits may very likely appear problematic. In any case, the psycho-sociological processes shaped by the epidemic bring challenges that will need to be managed. After the epidemic, we will face remarkable changes, and a new normal will exist in political and international affairs in addition to many other fields. Depending on technology-authority relations, In particular, techno-politics may become the frontier in political life. Large-scaled phenomena like epidemics and disasters can also cause great shake ups and changes in economic areas just like in politics. The history of epidemics shows us their power to change economies. The most concrete influences of COVID-19 will most probably be seen and persist in economic areas on the basis of socio-economic stratification. This process will affect all economic factions as it will circulate economic depression and problems across the world. Education systems are surely one of the fields the epidemic has caught unprepared; they are practically astonished by how to deal with it. Formal education was the first massive activity to be disrupted once lockdowns started. The COVID-19 pandemic will likely result in the rethinking and even restructuring of education systems regarding all aspects, from philosophy to the methods and techniques they apply. Policy-makers and implementers will be forced to do this. The technological developments and attributes of the new generations have already started discussions on questioning traditional methods, leaning toward new ones for a long time; and COVID-19 appears likely to accelerate this.

The discourse of the new normal will be determinant in shaping all areas influenced by COVID-19. Because some questions and obscurities exist on what the next normal will be and how it will be shaped, new opinions concerning this can be said to be scary, but its intrinsic inevitability has begun being indicated. In particular, individuals and whole societies have been challenged to publicly submit to the healthcare discourses and politics. Because people have been forced to take in exaggerated tunnels of fear, the new normal may be considered as an escape path from fears. Many fields can be noticed as trying to justify the new normal in positive ways. As seen in previous experiences, because the new normal carries new behaviors, habits, fears, facilities, industries, and markets, one may say that, post-COVID-19, the world will not remain as it had been. This discourse partly stems from the actuality of the phenomena, as well as being partly constructed through manipulations. In other words, the actuality of the influences caused by the pandemic has a potential to create a critical process of change; meanwhile, this also refers to the desire several actors with various purposes have to be included in and to manage the process through interpretations based on an exaggerated imagining of the future. 

While discussions are found on when the epidemic will end, all agree its effects will remain after the process. In this sense, we can on the one hand see many efforts to overcome the healthcare problems caused by the epidemic and, on the other hand, the many struggles to control its destructive individual and social impacts across the world and in Turkey. The most important of these is the actuality that this epidemic has become one of the most crucial crises encountered in the world as a whole in recent times. Accordingly, humanity seems to have come together, perhaps for the first time, to struggle against a common enemy despite some deviations. Coming up with new understandings and new behavioral patterns is possible in terms of both the epidemic’s extensity and profundity. We will see how, on which side, and to what extent these changes will appear in the future. We can express our expectation to be that social life has the ability to conscientiously elude this crisis with minimal harm.

We will face the new normal after the crisis caused by the epidemic, and differentiations are sure to exist. However, the amounts will not be as huge as predicted for various purposes. I had wanted to analyze hope and expectations, but future is fictionalized by focusing on how societies can be controlled. Making a sufficient futuristic evaluation is nigh impossible about what expectations, questions, and lessons humanity will have; about whether the future will get better, and about whether it will be shaped on values. This is only because post-modern philosophy has a fragmented and short-term perception of time and memory. Changes will absolutely happen, but it will not be a zero point. In other words, starting from scratch with no viral revolutions will not be possible. The virus, being the source of the epidemic, can create a coalescing picture by forcing people to take in tunnels of fear, but it isn’t able to build a great movement by creating a collective sentiment. Additionally, interpreting the future as a linear process is impossible.