It’s Day 49, seven weeks in isolation. That’s a long time for someone like me, who’s never done anything for seven weeks straight. It’s a historically long time. Even the Austro-Prussian Seven Week War didn’t eat up the whole seven weeks.

So it’s no wonder that so many Americans, with their Twitter-length attention spans, are getting ready to bolt out of their homes and flock to restaurants, bowling alleys, gyms, malls, the beach, the park, bars—anywhere but in their living rooms, dens and pop-up home offices.

The thaw is beginning to come to many states this week, though invariably certain restrictions will remain in place. Many are reopening restaurants, though typically only at 25% to 50% of their capacity. In Kentucky, they’re bringing back horse racing, but with no fans in the grandstands.

While bars will continue to remain closed in most states, Indiana is allowing them to open as long as they serve food and don’t exceed 50% capacity.

Texas on Monday will reopen restaurants, movie theaters, malls, museums and libraries, again at 25% occupancy and with two vacant seats between guests at the theaters.

Often, state restrictions are on a county-by-county basis. Iowa, on Monday, will allow 77 of its 99 counties to reopen restaurants and fitness clubs at 50% capacity, and Florida is reopening beaches in Jacksonville and in the northeast part of the state, though the Keys remain closed to visitors until June at the earliest.

While things are still fairly tightly locked down in the Pacific coast states of Washington, Oregon and California (though on Tuesday, Washington will open golf courses, with “foursomes” pared down to two people and no golf carts), thanks to the triumvirate of West Coast governors, Gavin Newsom, Oregon’s Kate Brown and Washington’s Jay Inslee, the jigsaw pattern of easing restrictions in states throughout the country will likely be picked through to determine re-openings in those states as well as in LA County and Long Beach.

A return to normal? Probably not if you’re a restaurant owner or worker, or the proprietor of a small, or even a large business.

An easing of restrictions will be just that, not an elimination. The term “abundance of caution” is not being exiled from the COVID lexicon and won’t be until a vaccine arrives or that glorious moment when—poof!—it just disappears.

When restaurants are open and allowed just 25%, or even 50% of their capacities, they’re either going to have to raise their prices to prohibitive levels to the point where places like Schooner or Later and the Small Cafe will just be serving $40 oatmeal to small groups of elite yachtsmen, or increase the churn by setting a time limit on how long customers can sit around chatting and dawdling over that third or fourth cup of coffee.

The hospitality business, which Long Beach has had a long success with will, too, have to adjust, with big conventions and expos being curtailed for at least the near future, and that, too, affects hotels and restaurants.

Golf, which so many freedom-lovers place high on their list of reasons for liberation, will be an altogether different activity and will revert to the apocryphal Twainism “walk in the park spoiled” with carts eliminated from the courses and golfers only allowed out in pairs. That ought to stick a fork in weekday tournaments as well, cutting the field of participants in half along with doubling the greens fees if there’s any money to be raised for charity.

But, who knows, I may be painting too bleak of a picture. Maybe Americans’ newfound pleasure in buying meals for takeout even from top-shelf restaurants may be enough to secure the future of good restaurants, while the success of telecommuting in this era may make life more bearable for those who were becoming used to 90-minute daily commutes. We may actually blunder into cleaning the air and forestalling the bleak effects of climate change.

Salons and barbers are high on many people’s list of places they want to see reopened, and states that have allowed hair-cutting shops to open have generally done it carefully, making sure that reservations are required and masks are worn by employees and customers. Theaters, too, will have social-distancing requirements before they’re allowed to reopen, which will make movie-going a new experience at least in the fact that the tall guy or the lady with the hat won’t be sitting in front of you.

Add to all of these restrictions and adjustments the fact that many of the more clever residents, along with those who are at greater risk of serious illness or death from COVID, will continue to stay at home until the risk dwindles considerably or disappears.

So, perhaps it is still too early to cry “the end is near,” whichever way you look at it, but it seems that the often elusive light at the end of the tunnel may be approaching to cut through the darkness of these last 49 days and counting, but you can be sure that the landscape at the end of the tunnel will be largely unrecognizable to those of us who had lived through the “normal times” of a mere three months ago.