this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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I don't really get how things are supposed to work now. Covid still exists, and the vaccine offers incomplete protection. But apparently things are back to normal for most people? Even I don't wear my N95 all day while I'm in the office, but when I wear it in crowded places I'm one of very few people doing that.
Covid is now endemic and no longer an epidemic/pandemic, so the need to contain cases is less immediately important. I, too, still like to wear masks in super crowded places or if I'm not feeling well but it is rare.
Just tacking on, Covid has changed. It’s, by and large, more infectious and less deadly than it was in 2020 on top of being well studied. Panicking about a potential 10% mortality rate from an unknown rapidly spreading virus was reasonable. Panicking about a known low mortality rate virus is unnecessary.
That said, n95 has been a game changer for me. Between allergies and reducing my time with the flu, Covid, and colds, it’s been amazing. Feel free to prove how incredible your immune system is, insecure folks. I’ll be over here enjoying my clear sinuses.
Taking precautions against a novel deadly virus with unknown transmission vectors is not panic. One can certainly panic while doing so.
Once more was learned, our precaution protocols became more focused.
You made some good points, but just to say death is not the only outcome to worry about. Long covid is devastating lives.
It’s an interesting and difficult question to answer.
My personal take: we collectively went through a really difficult time. The virus killed a lot of people; over 7 million globally according to the WHO. The vaccines were instrumental in slowing the spread and keeping people safer than they would’ve been without them.
The vaccines and science bought us time. We learned how to treat people, and we also gathered data on what the virus does to people. Basically, we now ‘know’ how most people will react to an infection. And since corona is here to stay, most of us will have gone through an infection once or twice by now.
So today, corona is less scary than when it started. We’ve lived through it, we understand it, we have measures to protect the weakest from it. It’s now a part of life much like the flu.
We’ll never be back to a world without corona. But we’ve learned to live with the virus for now.
Humanity has always been dealing coronaviruses by the way, just to a lesser extent than a global pandemic. There's a reason it was called SARS-CoV-2. Hopefully if there's a SARS-CoV-3 we'll deal with it a bit better... hopefully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-1
The virus has weakened considerably. For most people, it really is just another flu. I live with my sister, she just got it this past week. Neither me nor her boyfriend got sick, and I'm totally negative. She's mostly recovered now after a week. Also, I was a few months out of date with the booster. She was totally out of date.