People who shout and gesticulate while walking unaccompanied though city centres used to be called nutters. But we now have a less pejorative term for such behaviour: we call it Bluetooth. Sophisticated societies tend to not rush to acknowledge such a phenomenon as the ‘new normal’. But when subjected to the seismic disruption of a global pandemic, mores which have remained immutable for generations can gain obsolescence faster than last year’s smartphone.