COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.]
The only places that require masks near me are the health facilities, which is fine. I only wear mine when I visit my dad, he's on hospice with quite a few things going on with him and I'm sure his system couldn't handle so much as a bad cold, much less Covid. He didn't get the current booster or a flu shot, so we are being careful. I do encourage everyone to become current on your boosters and get the flu shot as well. Don't let regret be the last emotion you feel.
I'd love to be current on my boosters, but I can't get one; the UK is only giving them to front-line healthcare staff, those designated vulnerable, their carers, and the over 50s.
Meanwhile, in principle masks are still recommended for crowded indoor locations, but when I'm in one I can usually count the number of people following that advice on one finger, and I only need that if I'm looking in a mirror. It's largely no masks anywhere except in some (definitely not all) hospitals where they've kept a requirement.
Those same hospitals are currently getting hammered. It's a combination of factors, but Covid is one of them and it's definitely not helping. Thanks to vaccinations the data for 2022 was better in most regards, but we still had five waves of Covid here, lots of hospitalisations (135,000 primarily for Covid), significant deaths (33,000 recorded) so, you know, better, but I wouldn't call it
good.
But the data shows good things about the most recent booster (the one I can't get), so yes, I'd get it if I could and I'd recommend it to others too.