The year 2021 started with most of us hoping that normality would soon return. As vaccinations entered the COVID scene, we started looking forward to booking our holidays again, socialising with friends, meeting family, even going back to the office in the same way as we had always done before the virus disrupted all our plans and routines in 2020.

But despite a limited return to the ways of old, the new normality just seems to prolong itself and continues to look very different from the normality we so desire. Uncertainty is the only thing that seems permanent.

Many have learned how to adapt. But not everyone has navigated the disruption successfully. It is a sobering reality, for example, that mental health problems have grown in the last two years.

This is especially so, it seems, among the young, including children, and among older people. In switching from in-person to online learning for an extended period, children and adolescents were deprived of their friends. It cannot be said with certainty that they will never go back to that arrangement.

Older people in care homes were confined to their rooms for months on end and fear being locked in again. Others are again limiting their trips out of the house and cutting down on family visits, fearing the latest wave of the pandemic might expose them to grave risk.

The medical authorities have risen to the occasion by rolling out vaccines to the whole population, reducing the risk of infection and of severe health consequences for those infected. It is safe to assume that hundreds of visits to hospital and the ITU, and many deaths, have been saved through vaccination.

On the economic front, the government introduced unprecedented business support measures to help those worst affected by the pandemic. This has helped keep the number of job losses relatively low. What we need to worry about now is how the bill is going to be paid for the expensive safety nets laid out.

Still, a lot of people have had to make drastic economic adjustments in their own lives, such as those who depend on tourism and catering and those who earn a living through cultural or entertainment activities. They are rarely sure what their next paycheque will look like anymore.

For the most part, 2021 may not have been as traumatic as 2020. When it was necessary, a lot of us mastered the art of working from home, willingly sacrificed their holiday abroad to stay safe, limited their visits to crowded spaces, kept a dutiful distance from older relatives and wore face masks religiously with little complaint.

We learnt to communicate more online and bought more goods and services over the internet. We were thankful for the technology that allows us to do this, a psychological boost as COVID fatigue increasingly set in.

The arrival of Omicron in late November has once again cast doubt over everything. The recent economic forecasts based on an imminent return to the good old days of safe, carefree travel, shopping, entertainment and socialising are up in the air again. It shows how futile it still is to resort to happy talk about the future.

Will 2022 present us with yet more of the same level of uncertainty? One thing is sure. We must keep learning to live with the uncertainty and to manage it pragmatically. And we must lend more support to those who, for varied reasons, may have difficulty doing so.