Exactly. Two years in, there is very little political will remaining, even in “blue states,” to re-instate mask mandates or other restrictions. People who want to be careful will keep being careful (wearing masks in public, limiting their time in indoor public spaces, etc.).
If BA.2 turns out to be as what seems to be predicted (i.e., mostly only a serious health threat to those who are unvaccinated and not previously infected), it’ll be a news item for a few weeks, and that’s it.
This. We’re in “everybody save yourselves!” territory now. Those of us who take the pandemic seriously and haven’t fallen in with the death cult, must simply do what we can to protect ourselves as best we can.
I expect I’ll be masking and social distancing and getting routine booster shots for the rest of my natural life, and for some time thereafter.
This is my feeling. I’m in Canada and restrictions were severe. I know three people who lost their businesses, any number of others who lost their jobs as a result, and a whole lot of people who couldn’t even travel to other parts of Canada, due to provinces closing their borders. Canadians have a reputation of being famously compliant with their governments’ rulings, but there is only so much we can take. Especially after looking across the border, and seeing Americans able to do things (visit family in other cities, fly across America, take vacations out of their state, and so on; which we were not allowed to do).
Not long ago, and elsewhere, I once compared today’s Canadians to an elementary school class on the last day of school. The clock says “Five minutes to three,” and school ends at three. All the kids (i.e. Canadians) are squirming in their seats, obeying the teacher, but just wanting to get the hell out of school and into summer vacation. Finally, the bell rings, and the class runs out. Now, the teacher says, “Wait, you didn’t learn about something. Get back here!” Do you think that the kids are going to come back to learn? No, they won’t.
The same will apply to future pandemic restrictions. The government says we cannot go to church? Screw you, government. The government says we have to have a Covid test before getting on a plane to come home? Screw you, government (all Canadian citizens have the right of return to Canada, effectively killing that requirement). Oh, I have to quarantine if I haven’t had a test before coming home? Screw you, government, what the hell can you do if I decide to break quarantine and go three blocks to the corner store for potato chips and Coke? Call a cop, who is as sick of all this BS as the majority of Canadians are? And our cops exist to enforce traffic laws and crimes, not whether somebody goes to the corner store. Get real.
I’d suggest that our restrictions were so tough, that Canadians simply won’t put up with any more. Any government that attempts to reinstitute restrictions is asking for a loss at the next election. At least 80% of Canadians are vaccinated. If any government tried putting on new restrictions, I can easily see individual Canadians and Canadian businesses ignoring them, and double-dog-daring the government to hit them with tickets.
Like I said, we’re kids on the last day of school. Once let out, we’re not going back, no matter what the teacher says.
But is that really what the science says? I’ve been vaxxed and boosted. Caught omnicron in January. There’s also not much COVID in my area. For now, I don’t think there’s any chance of me getting very ill from COVID or, more importantly, catching and spreading it. I don’t see how me wearing a mask makes other people safer. I will still do so if asked, but I don’t think the science supports the idea that not wearing a mask is somehow anti-social behavior.
ETA: I just don’t think by not wearing a mask, I’m siding with a “death cult”.
Same here. I’ll wear it when it’s asked of me or when the CDC tells me to. I am not going the rest of my life wearing a mask and distancing myself from others when it seems I’m in a very low risk group and 3x vaxxed. If conditions change and I am advised otherwise, I will do what the science community advises me to do. If someone is uncomfortable with me not wearing a mask, I will don one. Otherwise, I am defaulting to no mask for the foreseeable future.
If you get a booster shot every year, there’s really no point in wearing a mask. Covid is here to stay; probably literally every single person will get it at least once in their lives. All that you can realistically try to do is minimize the damage. Anything more is paranoia and possibly mental illness.
We don’t know how damaging long covid is yet. That is a concern a lot of us have. Being mildly to moderately sick for a few days or a few weeks is one thing, but some people seem to get long term issues from covid.
Katie Bach, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said she was “floored” when she started crunching the numbers on the ranks of workers who have stepped out of the job market due to long COVID.
Her analysis found that an equivalent of 1.6 million people are missing from the full-time workforce because of the disease, which can leave people incapacitated for months with persistent symptoms including fatigue, brain fog, headaches, memory loss and heart palpitations.
Based on her research on how many long COVID patients stop working or scale back their hours, Bach estimated that about 1.1 million workers have dropped out of full-time work due to long COVID at any given time, while about 2.1 million may have cut their hours due to their symptoms. All together, that equates to about 1.6 million full-time workers who are missing from the economy, according to Bach.
Maybe it’ll get better, who knows. But 1.6 million people of working age being too disabled to work in the US alone is a serious issue.