Here it seems like covid has been something of a boon for local diving. I think a lot of Swedish divers are normally of the warm-water-only variety -- hitting the Red Sea and other places, and maybe a month or two of summer diving at home if they're really enthusiastic. But this year there's been zero travel to warm water possible, the borders are still effectively closed and will likely be so until the end of the year.
For me as a new diver I was hoping to do some diving here during summer and had a few trips planned. The trips never happened, instead I got to go all in on local diving and get really comfortable in my drysuit. And I'm not the only one, apparently the good local diving outfits have been fully booked every week of the season, which is not usually the case. Other people have also gotten used to the climate here and become more accepting of cold water diving.
Now I'm hoping to keep the diving up all year round. This is not something that was on my radar pre-covid. Maybe I'll even get some buddies.
(Still looking forward to warm water diving at some point in the distant future though... hopefully)