A virus that seems both pervasive and mild offers an opening to people who are, let’s call them, “vaxxed and done.” The attitude of the VADs is this:
For more than a year, I did everything that public-health authorities told me to do. I wore masks. I canceled vacations. I made sacrifices. I got vaccinated. I got boosted. I’m happy to get boosted again. But this virus doesn’t stop. Year over year, the infections don’t decrease. Instead, virulence for people like me is decreasing, either because the virus is changing, or because of growing population immunity, or both. Americans should stop pointlessly guilting themselves about all these cases. In the past week, daily confirmed COVID cases per capita were higher than the U.S. in Ireland, Greece, Iceland, Denmark, France, the U.K., Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and even Australia, one of the most COVID-cautious countries in the world. As the coronavirus continues its unstoppable march toward endemicity, our attitude toward the virus should follow a similar path toward stoicism. COVID is becoming something like the seasonal flu for most people who keep up with their shots, so I’m prepared to treat this like I’ve treated the flu: by basically not worrying about it and living my life normally.
I am (very) Vaxxed and DoneBut there is an opposing group. Let’s call them the “vaxxed and cautious.” Here’s my best summary of their perspective:
Why on earth would we suddenly relax measures now, during the largest statistical wave of COVID ever recorded in the U.S.? We shouldn’t treat Omicron like any old seasonal flu, because it’s not like any old seasonal flu. It’s likely deadlier for those without immunity and almost certainly several times more transmissible for everybody else. We have no idea what the effects of Omicron on long COVID will be, but evidence of lingering symptoms should make us wary of just letting tens of millions of people get needlessly infected. Moreover, the health-care system is already worn down and at risk of being overloaded. Record-high caseloads are societally debilitating, creating long chains of infections that are bound to reach some immunocompromised people and the elderly, thus causing needless death. For all these reasons, we should take individual measures to throttle the spread of this virus.