The people of today could not in their wildest imaginations, foresee even a few months ago that, our generation would be the age that would reset the “ethical buttons” for new cultures and lifestyles.

The world is ill-prepared to face the effects of this new strain of virus not only the developing countries. The impacts of Covid-19 are devastating and cut across all facets of our lives. The Chinese New Year holiday was conspicuously not celebrated for the first time in many years.

Hong Kong and Shanghai Disneyland were closed for the first time since they were created. These became the first social hubs in the world that set the pace of what was going to become norms. Is it a new conspiracy theory for psychosocial change and power?

Social Distancing

Social distancing has become a common term in our vocabulary. Many have come to know of such social terminology only in 2020.We are asked to seat not too close to others even our relatives.

In restaurants, in schools, in transportation settings, religious or political gatherings, the standard now is social distancing. Never has love impulses been so constrained. Any Cough or Cold in any gathering provokes disgust and fear, and keeps everyone around uneasy. This alone put those coughing in difficult positions.

Nowadays, anxiety gets the best of one with any cold or dry throat; mild or acute. This has intensified social distancing on those with cold symptoms. People of Ghana can easily recall a popular joke in the Ghanaian political circles as ‘Ayari-Couth’ when Mr. Hassan Ayariga repeatedly coughed while giving commentary on governance issues; a program organized by the Institute of Economic Affairs. Times have really changed so fast that what we use to know as common cold or cough could provoke fear and panic in meetings or any social gathering.

The president of the republic of Ghana His Excellency Nana AkufoAddo announced the imposition of strict restrictions to movement and asked that residents of the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area and Kasoa and the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area and its contiguous districts to stay at home for two weeks, to stave off this pandemic.

He further briefed the nation on various steps taken by the government to permanently fight the virus, noting that “As a result, residents of these two areas had to make significant adjustments to our way of life, with the ultimate goal being to protect permanently our continued existence on this land.”

New Greeting habits



Greeting is an expression of love and it is deepened when people can touch each other. Love, they say encompasses all the sensory organs and people don’t feel completely involved without a touch. The “nearer the dearer” is gradually fading away. New ways of greetings were observed during this period. A new form of greeting using the legs and not the hands gradually crept into the system during the peak season of the Coronavirus crisis in China. The method went viral and although some have used it to crack jokes, it may become a culture if the coronavirus epidemic persists. Another form of greetings that was mostly practised in Asia and some parts of Africa was the curtsy bow. This has been reignited in many parts of the world and other cultures are heeding to the format. The trend could redefine inter-cultural communication.

Washing of hands



Never has hygienic practices of handwashing been emphasized as in the past two months (February and March 2020). When kids grow up, these Hygienic practices are thought them but with time, they are neglected because they don’t see the elderly do same. For the first time, hand washing has become a thing for the young and the old and surely, after the end of the coronavirus pandemic, some of these habits would remain as good hygienic practices if not in some communities, it would impact some individual lives forever. Also, cultures of eating with the hands may be constrained as the coronavirus becomes more and more ravaging. Eating with the hands could see a dramatic fall in percentage from 2020. With the warning that more viruses are still to hit the earth, many people may prefer eating with cutleries and this could change permanently some cultural settings where people eat with their hands.

Face Touching



According to an article by Zee Krstic, published on Good Housekeeping website on March 11, 2020, researchers at the University of Leipzig in Germany had published an entire study that shows that even medical students (who are exposed to all sorts of germs and bacteria) touched their face almost 25 times per hour on average. The hip-hop culture has hyped this habit in modern youth through music and films. The caressing of beards or chins is an instinctive body language that most boys and men are involved in. It happens unconsciously without them really realizing why they do it.

Some studies show that, rubbing the face and particularly the chin can indicate thinking, evaluating and deciding. Caressing the beard may not be classified as a bad habit but medical experts would advise that, we do well during this period to avoid it. One bad habit that has lasted for ages and is still common among many people including some elderly has been the cutting of fingernails with the teeth. Many a time, people don’t even notice that they are involved in this grimy habit.

Funeral, Marriages, Birthday and New Births



In Ghana and some other African countries, Funerals are very important because, they are regarded as the last tribute or respect we pay to someone before he or she permanently becomes invisible on the earth. As a matter of fact, funerals are considered as important as birth and celebrated more than the former. Funeral grounds have transmuted from being just a place for mourning to the field for cultural, religious and political exhibitions.

Unlike the West and Asia where families may cremate the dead, Africans most often spend weeks or months to plan the funeral and have the physical presence of the deceased for final funeral rites. Because of that, people have decided to postpone their funeral activities; a development that is in itself a looming catastrophe, that could sooner or later hit African communities adversely. Mortuaries would be jam-packed with corpses. The sad part of it is that, Royals in most African settings are not buried as ordinary individuals and in most cases such funeral rites are crowded with people from different ages and backgrounds. This should propel discussions on how to handle royal deaths during this period. People would be faced with two options: to bury the royal privately or keep the mortal remains until further notice. Also, around burial rites lingers security issues such as leadership transition/coronations that sometimes turn out to be violent.

Unlike in other places, except the royals, such terminologies as “Private Burial” are alien to many traditions and societies in Africa. A segment of life seems to revolve around funerals, especially in royal settings. Come to think of it, the catering, the textile and the transport industries, breweries would all be impaired without funerals rites and celebration of life as fashionably called. While some may postpone their marriages so they make it big after the pandemic, others would take the opportunity to make their marriages less populated and thus, less expensive. It has never profited the couples to engage in expensive marriage celebration and start family life in deficit.