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On Tuesday afternoon Governor Gavin Newsom held one of his daily COVID-19 pressers to engage with the public about what the government has learned and what they’re plans are for California’s future. However, this presser left a strange taste in the mouth as Newsom described what the likely new reality of the world could look like.

“You may be having dinner with a waiter wearing gloves, maybe a face mask. Dinner where the menu is disposable, where half of the tables no longer appear, where your temperature is checked before you walk into the establishment. These are likely scenarios as we process the next phase, the next iteration,” Newsom said.

More teleworking, long distance learning, staggered school schedules, and reworked social spaces were also all part of the strange world that the governor painted.

“Deep sanitization, massive deep cleaning, a predicate not just in our schools but disinfecting our parks, our playgrounds, our benches, our swings, our sidewalks, our streets. All common areas for businesses, office building managers. The idea that we still pushing to get to floor 10 and floor 11, to make sure that there are wipes, making sure that there is the kind of sanitation within those building systems. All of that is guidance that likely will be put out which again will be predicate to reintroduce a semblance of normalcy.”

Dr. Sonia Angell, the Director of the California Department of Public Health, also said that face coverings were likely to become common place. She also pointed out that there was a silver lining to all of this – new opportunities. New markets and job opportunities are likely to emerge from the social shift created by physical distancing.

“This period that we’re entering is not about going back to how things were before. It’s about going forward that are healthy for all of us, but it won’t look the same,” Dr Angell said.

Newsom was quick to point out though that this reality still might be a ways off since it is uncertain whether we have seen the worse of the Coronavirus yet. The governor said that any mass gatherings in the coming months would be “negligible at best” under current projections, though he also admitted things can change quickly.

These visions came after Newsom laid out what milestones needed to be reached before he would consider easing the current stay-at-home order.