One poopy thing about this whole deal is you can't test the alternatives. Whatever action we take, we'll figure out the consequences at some point, but we can only theorize before and after about courses of action we don't take.
There is a working theory (emphasis on "theory,"....should not be taken to mean "this is what scientists are saying") that our vaccine method and timing has caused the virus to be as adaptive as it is. We can't know that, but there's a logical mechanism behind it. It's possible we made this thing worse in the long term. So why do things the way we did them? Because we only have data pointing to that possibility after we get to see the repercussions of the roads taken.
Probably an average Joe such as myself can hardly grasp the complexity of a pandemic. We've literally never seen it in our lifetime, and from what I can suss out, epidemiologists and virologists can't grasp it all in real time either. We're also only used to dealing with naturally occurring viruses. You can find uses and necessities for all those in the bigger environmental picture. I wouldn't think that's the case with a man-made virus, and the larger point is likely how differently something man-made behaves vs. something naturally occurring. The rate at which the original virus adapted from its spike protein (what the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines neutralized) was quite something. You don't see mutations and responses like that in other viruses we're familiar with, so I'm told.
We are officially out of a pandemic and now classified as endemic. Probably to the surprise of no one. Time for governments, media, and people to acknowledge there is no "beating" this thing, and get on with the business of figuring how to go back to normal in a reasonable way while mentally and emotionally accepting that there's now something new in the world that just might kill you, but not likely to, and that's okay, because that's been life for millions of years. I want people to be safe and not die. I also want people to stop committing suicide, kids to stop being developmentally stunted due to wearing masks, the economy not to be crap.....etc. A strong economy, btw, as anyone who has done a smidge of research will tell you, is the most important societal factor in a population's long term health. Can't depress the economy for an extended period of time and claim you're trying to medically protect your citizens. It's ignorance, rhetoric, power-grabbing, something else I don't see, or a combination of all four.
