One strategy is cocooning, where people have assessed the risks and decided to minimise exposure to the virus, especially in settings involving strangers.

It's a type of hunkering down to weather the storm, a protective shield, but one which is currently rebounding on many businesses as customers stay away in droves.

Cocooning usually takes place as people lose confidence in government advice.

While it's pretty clear governments didn't quite expect the extent of cocooning occurring, it's a common pattern with pandemics and indeed with many existential risks.

The bunkers many families built during the Cold War (more in the USA than in Australia) were a classic family cocoon to shut the world out.

What has changed is the shift from temporary cocooning based on government advice (such as short sharp lockdowns) to widespread, potentially-enduring cocooning.

This cocooning is taking place at the individual level (for example not going to restaurants), within families (for example cocoons within a home for different family members) and at a community level (for example nursing home complexes).

Ikea has increased sales by 40 per cent over the pandemic as people redesign and make their home cocoons more permanent.

The simple point is that even when Omicron passes more waves will follow and Tasmanians have shown a preference for cocooning, so we need to be thinking of what the endemic model looks like.

Two global trends are emerging here; the move to gated communities and the move to new business models to service cocoons.

Heightened perceptions of safety and security have led to an increase in demand for 'gated' communities and a significant increase in property values within gated communities.

Gated communities are where people with common values or interests come together and create a deliberate border or gate from the outside world.

In Tasmania we have few community-scale gated communities (of say 1-5000 people), but plenty of micro-gated communities such as aged care complexes and some lifestyle communities often associated with religious groups or sustainability.

The importance of the community scale cocoons is that they allow 'normal' social and economic interaction which reduce somewhat the mental and physical health risks of simply shutting off from the world; a type of enduring lockdown coupled with the ability to operate normally behind managed borders where the community, not the government, decides the porosity.

Many of these communities have basic health facilities and when supported by telehealth from experts can undertake a large range of diagnostic and treatment procedures within the community.

Indeed, Australia leads the world in some of these health areas, for example with the new Centre for Antarctic, Remote and Marine Health.

Our Antarctic expeditions are quintessential cocoons for many months of the year and can cope with almost all medical emergencies.

Many gated communities are setting up their own COVID management systems including a 24/7 nurse or doctor, diagnostic kits, ambulance, isolation beds, oxygen and other equipment.

This is one of the next steps of cocooning - the formation of end-to-end management systems for pandemic risk within the cocoon.

Within gated communities there is now a focus on community apps which enable a responsive digital safety net within the community from temperature checks and RATs through to contactless delivery systems.

More broadly, one of the reasons for the increasing move from cities to regions is the sense that regions and some local government areas lend themselves more to cocoons, the ability to develop self-contained systems and potentially control borders.

All to minimise stranger contact.

One of the business strategies that enables cocooning but deals with the risks of contact with strangers is to focus on groups from within cocoons.

An example is when retailers (including restaurants for example) have specific hours/times for specific groups, say from particular areas of industries or ages etc.

Many businesses do this anyway to attract customers - such as Bunnings opening early for emergency services workers.

Alternatively (and this again is common in gated communities) businesses such as restaurants travel into the community.

Much of this already happens for some trades and professions such as hairdressing and mobile tool services.

It's a different way of thinking and a different business model and one that is well established, but not in Tasmania.

For businesses that can't come to you (such as tourism) the model developing is to target specific 'cocoon' populations at specific times so that the risk of 'stranger' contact is limited.

As with the pandemic itself, the shift to endemic cocooning means a rethink of how we embed immunological principles into our traditional views of land use and business planning, and reformulate places and spaces to maximise containment.