Is coronavirus the end of the handshake?

Now that social distancing is a thing (not that I’m complaining, let’s all stay safe), handshakes and hugs are out, at least for the time being. Depending on how long it takes for this to play out, I can’t help but wonder how it affects the longterm social fabric of our society? If we stop shaking hands for long enough, at some point, do we stop wanting to shake hands altogether? Perhaps, in our future, we’ll be more about bowing, less about hand shaking.

Despite the hint of facetiousness, it will be interesting to see how the coronavirus affects our society long term. Except for the 2008 financial crisis, I don’t think there’s much that has happened in my lifetime that’s had such a global impact and changed so much in so little time. While coronavirus is not yet even close in scale or impact (hopefully it doesn’t even begin to come close), the only other similar, major world events I can think of are the the world wars (any feedback or disagreement on this perspective is welcome). My hope is that everything goes back to “normal” soon enough, but only time will tell.